More evidence of Avios pax being treated differently?

[barnaby100]

I was gold in 1A on a recent flight. No food choice-and I was unable to eat the only option due to its food content. they had only loaded the exact number of meals in long haul 1st

Crew member logged it as a complaint. Got a generic email that said

We also understand how important food and drink is to your enjoyment of the flight, and in our First cabins, we aim to deliver a meal that exceeds expectations. We clearly didn’t meet our usual standards this time.

We refresh our food and drink menus in First cabins every month and use feedback like yours to guide us as we do. I’ve shared your comments with my colleagues in the Catering team to help us improve the choices we offer and the quality of these meals.

I replied it doesn’t matter how good the food is if you don’t load any!and cancelled £13,000 of first flights

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[Lady London]

When meals are so cheap, I don’t understand why BA doesn’t load, say, 30% excess meals in F.

After all, whether paid in cash or the so-called extra ‘taxes’ BA charges on any avios ticket, the price paid for the seat in F is rather large.

Even in J surely enough cash or BA ‘taxes’ has been paid for each seat to allow some level of overloading of food choices.

And you’d think BA would collect and leverage the information as to what are the popular food choices on each route. Hmmm roast beef with potatoes and apple crumble to follow on any route between 2 English-speaking countries on a Wednesday in winter? Or cold quinoa salad? Is BA seriously going to load more than 1 quinoa salad, on that route 🙂

[Lady London]

PS Barnaby100 I hope you gave them the booking refs of the £13k of flights BA’s pathetic response to your food complaint made you cancel, in a reply to them?

[Richie]

There are some airline execs who are still excited about the one olive being removed from a salad to save cost.

[NorthernLass]

@LL, before they even started serving I predicted minimal demand for quinoa salad for pax flying to MAN on a freezing cold April night 🤣

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[ChrisC]

Lady London wrote:

When meals are so cheap, I don’t understand why BA doesn’t load, say, 30% excess meals in F.

They used to but given the small numbers in the cabin 30% isn’t really a lot and can mean as little as 2 more of what they think is the most popular dish and then 1 of the next most popular.

What’s not helped is the elimination of advanced selection which would enable more people – if they used the service – to select meals in advance.

On 4 recent AA flights I was able to select meals in advance including on two TCONs a dish not available for on board selection.

Didn’t Sean Doyle say something about this is one of his missives?

[NorthernLass]

I’m no airline executive but even I can see that restore the ability to select meals = less complaints about F & B for BA to deal with 🤷‍♀️

[Tracey]

@Tracey – that’s happened to us before, it just means that the CW cabin is full, it’s not in any way an upgrade!

I appreciate that the cabin was full, but some people were selected to be seated in the inarguably better cabin, despite being on reward 241.

[marks7389]

ChrisC wrote:

What’s not helped is the elimination of advanced selection which would enable more people – if they used the service – to select meals in advance.

I see Virgin Atlantic has announced today they are restarting advanced meal selection on services out of the UK from mid-April. Hopefully that will spur BA to do likewise.

[polly]

And our daughter got upgraded from PE to J, going west today, on an avios 241 with her friend. Simply delighted . No status at all… she was phoning in every couple of days to see if there was a seat in J that she could upgrade into with avios tho. Don’t know if that mattered… but no idea why it happened… so who knows what goes on in the minds of BA staff….
Anna, that seemed really odd behaviour from the FAs on your flight. No way do you pass by a row, esp as your sons seat was recently a paid for one…as LL says, 25k pp for hurt feelings…..and feeling abandoned…

[Lady London]

The Savage Squirrel wrote:

Jess wrote:

On our flight to Mauritius last month I was told by the CSM that as I had Gold status I would be served first, even though mine was an Avios booking, so it sounds rather like anything goes,

Sounds like exactly the kind of policy that will generate only very fractional goodwill for the beneficiary vs lots of badwill for those that lose out and takes effort and crew time to implement. To be honest I’d rather they just cracked on with serving the cabin in order – not least because in the end that’s far quicker and more efficient for everyone.

It’s the kind of policy a airline would only need to have if it’s planning to deliver poor sevice so they have a policy to choose the lucky recipient.

There are statisticaĺ formulas that will ensure 99% or any other % of passengers will receive their first choice of meal given x number of choices nd x passengers. Come on, you remember Statistics 101 it’s covered in about the 2nd lesson.

[ChrisC]

The Savage Squirrel wrote:

Jess wrote:

On our flight to Mauritius last month I was told by the CSM that as I had Gold status I would be served first, even though mine was an Avios booking, so it sounds rather like anything goes,

Sounds like exactly the kind of policy that will generate only very fractional goodwill for the beneficiary vs lots of badwill for those that lose out and takes effort and crew time to implement. To be honest I’d rather they just cracked on with serving the cabin in order – not least because in the end that’s far quicker and more efficient for everyone.

It’s been BA policy to do this for Golds for ages and ages.

Given the small numbers in the F cabin it only takes a few seconds to sort in the galley.

It only takes longer if the FA (but it’s usually the CSM) taking the orders flits around the cabin taking orders based on status rather than in seat row order.

Meals are then served in seat order unless you’ve asked for it to be served later.

[ChrisC]

LL yes there are formulae and algorithms to do that sort of thing but at the expense of huge amounts of food waste.

[sideshowbob]

NorthernLass wrote:

Thegasman wrote:

It’s BA policy to allocate menu choices based on status so if everyone else was higher status than your party you would be served last if you were an upgrade or had paid full fare.

The fact BA run their catering allocations so “efficiently” is another issue & deserving of scorn but it’s not a targeting of Avios tickets. It’s actually more of an issue in First as the far bigger J cabin means it’s more likely that predicted choices will match those of the passengers on the day.

Have you got some evidence for that? But OH is Bronze – I can’t believe every other passenger was either Silver or Gold!

@Tracey – that’s happened to us before, it just means that the CW cabin is full, it’s not in any way an upgrade!

I might put a complaint in – not just because of the food but also because the whole trip was blighted by IT issues and we were then delayed on our return connection due to staff shortages.

I used to be crew for BA and that’s very much how it works. Gold passengers always get served/asked first. What the crew member said to you doesn’t seem right though.

[eppleby]

I don’t know if award seat passengers are deliberately discriminated against but on a recent CW flight Chicago to LHR the cc member took my drinks order in strict row order I was in row 8 and my order was taken after row7 and with other passengers in row 8. I then waited for the best part of an hour whilst everybody else, including the rest of row 8, received their drinks before I was served. I only ordered a G&T.

[NorthernLass]

I’m pretty sure I’ve never been served out of turn before in relation to where I was sitting. But when I hit Silver in November I will be watching with interest!

[FatherOfFour]

We were in row 6 CE on our last Avios flight and were served drinks after row 7. (Rows 5 and 7 served simultaneously with trolley parked alongside us)
Didn’t think too much of it at the time.
We had special meals, which were served immediately after our first drinks – we’d barely touched them but were offered a top-up / another drink.

[Chabuddy Geezy]

Golds are meant to be served first, bronze and silver are not prioritised after that. This is their standard protocol.