Gold card welcome stopped?

[PSowden]

Have BA stoped doing welcoming Gold Card holders for flying with them? In the past 6 months I’ve done approx 30 flights with BA including to the US, South Africa and Sydney, as well as to Geneva, Zurich and Basel and I’ve not had a single flight where anyone has come and said hello, let alone thanked me for flying BA. Cathay and JAL still do it, but have BA stopped?

[Deek]

I’ve never had it on BA. Strangely enough one of the Lufthansa FA’s came and thanked me recently and I’m only a lowly Frequent Traveller, go figure.

[AndrewT]

Doesn’t tend to happen on short haul, I think only twice in 30+ flight’s in the last couple of years, but I’ve had it on every long haul flight I’ve taken recently.

Not that I think it adds a whole lot of value anyway. If I have any issues I’ll let them know, and can reasonably assume they are available if I need them, which is basically all that gets said.

[yonasl]

Happened on every IB flight I have taken, specially LHR-MAD in Y (and yet nothing on BA).

[JDB]

Why would you wish to be welcomed publicly for gold status? It seems rather embarrassing.

[John]

When I was gold, probably had it on about 40% of flights, but 9 out of 10 times it was just the cabin crew walking past and saying “Hello Mr John”. The only “benefit” was that it identified all the other golds within hearing distance… and identified me to them (well, I never used the gold luggage tags). Other passengers probably thought I was friends with the crew

[ClubSmed]

It happened on my flight last night GLA-LHR…sort of.
The Gold levels were welcomed by name as the in-flight lead made thier way down the aisle handing out menus.
That is until he got to halfway through row 3, which I think is fair enough as there were possibly too many names to easily commit to memory for a 1 hour flight.
I was on the 2nd half of row 3, so did not get the name check. This suits me, as like JDB, I find it rather embarrassing.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

I’ve been told by a BA CSM friend of mine that it’s not in the service standards “must do” list but in the “if there is time and there aren’t too many” category.

I’ve had it most of the time on short haul but really only when the CE cabin is small.

It’s more on the lines or “welcome back on board Mr X’ than any sort of fawning that your gold.

I don’t really mind either way. Nice if it happens but I’m not complaining if it doesn’t.

[MrWhite]

There’s no standard to this. I’ve seen everything from nothing, to the lead walking down the entire plane picking out the gold members to welcome. My last flight in CE, my family were welcomed by name, none of them having any status. The lead did this for everyone in CE.

I was chatting to a gold in economy once, who did look a little embarrassed when we were interrupted for his personal welcome. As a silver, I think I was given a smile 🙂

[PeteM]

When you are welcomed by the crew by name you can pretty much guarantee it’s going to be an excellent flight!

[Froggee]

What is more fun is to travel as a family of four on two separate PNRs.

I’m afraid this won’t work as well for same-sex couples but you then swap seats with your partner, who of course needs to have a different surname. It helps if he/she is a different ethnicity.

The member of cabin crew immediately worked out that we were the Froggee family but when the Cabin Service Director (or whatever they call them now) appeared with a computer printout and failed to overcome his gender and racial bias training by blurting out “I don’t think you’re Mr Froggee?” at Mrs Froggee, it was giggles all round.

One of the best things about losing gold is avoiding these awkward conversations. I don’t miss the handshakes either. Ewwww – germs!

[yonasl]

Only time being Emerald has helped is with Asian carriers like CX. You get welcomed by name and in economy get some slippers a bottle of water, etc.

[PeteM]

Froggee wrote:

I’m afraid this won’t work as well for same-sex couples but you then swap seats with your partner, who of course needs to have a different surname. It helps if he/she is a different ethnicity.

They invariably choose to welcome my husband as his surname looks a lot easier to pronounce! 🙂

[AJA]

I find that being courteous to crew works wonders whatever colour shiny card you have. It really doesn’t take much to smile and say hello to the crew as you board – to my mind it’s just good manners. On my flight back from Singapore in April as a lowly rust card holder I got addressed by name upon boarding and a welcome back greeting at my seat. And when disembarking at LHR the crew member who had served me throughout the flight was at the door and said goodbye to me by name and wished me a pleasant day. I put it down to engaging with her and her colleagues on boarding and throught the flight.

[Froggee]

Pete – you missed a trick. You should have combined both names into a double-barrel thereby ensuring mutual assured destruction for your welcome on board.

[Mr. AC]

I was really surprised recently – I was sitting on the last row, window seat, full CDG-LHR flight (which takes about 40-50 min), and around 25 min into the flight a FA came all the way from Club to welcome me, and offered to bring me a drink. Sort of nice, but I ended up chugging down a hot tea in 5 minutes because we were already were well on the way down by the time he brought it 😅

[JDB]

As above, I haven’t been gold for a while but when I was, I found it rather intrusive and I’m not sure I want everyone knowing my name or BA status. This was reinforced when after one such greeting, my neighbour said that name sounds familiar and asked if my family had webbed feet.