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Currently in business on an A380 to the US. First time flying anything other than economy so on the one hand it’s incredibly cool and fun. The food is great, the staff are lovely and the space I have is unbelievable.
All that being said, this business class section is knackered. We are travelling as a 3 and all of us have issues with our seat or the in flight entertainment (of which the screens are dire), the divider between me and the chap next to me (who isn’t in our group) has randomly dropped a few times, there’s another fella in the window seat who’s TV screen is just flapping about like a garden gate on a windy night and while he’s taking it with good spirits, the top panel of his screen divider falling out into his lap after the meal service could have understandable broken that.
Are these planes due for an refit? As this all feels a bit Faulty Towers British and not what you’d hope from the national carrier.
Can’t complain too much though, it’s a heck of a lot nicer than I’m used to (although I think the hamsters running the internet wheels need a bit of encouragement as 1.5 Mbps is a little tepid to say the least)
Given the number of A380s that currently struggle to get airborne, I think you’ve done okay!
Oh, I didn’t realise they were in such a bad state of repair. I knew a lot were grounded but I thought that was more due to demand and difficulty filling with that spoke and hub approach that isn’t the way more airlines operate any more. I thought it had on of the best safety and reliability records of any plane.
Shame, it’s such a lovely passenger experience due to its size but if this cabin is anything to go on they won’t be able to run them with a straight face for much longer.
@simonbarker – I hope you have a good flight anyway. It’s more of a BA thing than the majestic A380 – it’s just that BA chooses not to clean or maintain the seats/interiors in the way others do. Until not such a long time ago, those of us living in the sticks would have been overjoyed at 1.5 Mbps but thanks to the great Rural Broadband Initiative, we may not have a paved road or mains water/gas but we do have 400 Mbps and could have 900 for a few £ extra. London, only 50 miles away, now feels like the hamster wheel internet for us.
If the in-flight entertainment is broken/not usable & the divider isn’t working then I think you are well within rights to complain to BA that what you have paid for/redeemed Avios has lived upto expectations.
You may get some credit or Avios back from BA.
I’m not one for complaining over small issues, but if you pay for a service and it’s is poor you are well within your rights to raise it with BA.
I had the air unit drip water then ice drops on me on my first and only CW experience – aboard an indeed knackered A380. Crew pointed to the damp brown marks on the ceiling and said yes, drips do happen.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Qatar’s A380s are perfectly serviceable, and in fact I prefer that seat to the Q-suite anyway.
Can’t complain too much though, it’s a heck of a lot nicer than I’m used to
That’s the wrong attitude.
You can and should be raising a complaint(s) about all of this once you are back.Just flown back on A380 from LAX. Same issues, damaged plug sockets and usb ports not working. Cabinets not opening and tv buttons and tray table worn out. Cabin crew and manager were fantastic though and made great steps to “recover service”. The manager has put a report in and stated we will be compensated with some Avios. Couldn’t fault the staff but the planes are definitely in need of the long awaited refurb. Completely different experience to Club Suite on the way on on the 777-300
I had the air unit drip water then ice drops on me on my first and only CW experience
Oh that’s very disappointing.
You can and should be raising a complaint(s) about all of this once you are back.
Don’t worry we will be 😀 I just don’t want to take away the enjoyment of this in the moment too much (he says, writing a complaining post online during the flight!) But if we never complain companies won’t improve.
We were already planning a complaint about the way my Mum was treated at bag drop by an exceeding rude member of BA staff when she asked a very simple and reasonable question.
Don’t worry this is standard for the A380 we just flew back from Singapore on the A380 , seat had to be manually adjusted, food awful ,IFE woeful screen so bad it made watching anything impossible the good news is we landed at LHR safely. Only reason I will fly BA now is to use up Avios and companion vouchers. Would not pay good money to fly BA !!
Only time I’ve ever been on a BA a380 was when I flew back from Boston in 2017 and they seemed dated interiors compared to the refurbished 747 I went out on. If they haven’t been refreshed since then I dread to think what they’ll be like now
I was browsing flights for July ’25 and saw SIN is not an A380 any more: is that just
a temporary thing, bearing in mind equipment changes all the time?As others have mentioned, it’s BA’s conscious choice not to maintain and poor choice of materials/build quality that’s to blame, not the aircraft model. Emirates A380 are very well maintained, it’s a fantastic aircraft.
It is, sadly, a British “thing”. We accept 2nd best – poor service, broken infrastructure, shortages, corrupt political figures, delays in doing anything, double standards, inflated prices, nonsensical bureaucracy – all in all, the moment you land in the UK, you can detect the atmosphere of a failing state, casual acceptance of rubbish everywhere, potholes on every roads, public services pared to the bone, and a public sense of ” oh well…it is what it is “. BA is just a part of that decline – domestic flights within the UK cut right back, European services offering the minimum level of food and drink and seating room, and as the comment stated, some aircraft interiors not fit for service. I dont blame the cabin crews – the BA management for years have cut back & cut back to maintain profits – the customer comes a poor last in their consideration. Newer aircraft of course, are an improvement, and welcome. However, with the competition from other, better airlines, especially Far Eastern ones like Singapore, EVA, ANA, JAL I can find no convincing reason to fly BA – often paying just as much, for a less pleasent experience. Those airlines I’ve mentioned, along with some of the Gulf states airlines simply wouldnt accept offering such a poor service – and neither would their passengers !! Until the UK collectively decides to no longer accept this continual decline into mediocracy, sadly this state of affairs will continue. With BA, perhaps voting with our feet would hit them where it hurts, and might encourage management to offer real improvements. As for the rest of the UK – ??
Sad to see my experience wasn’t a one off. Overall we enjoyed the flight and I’ve never felt so fresh and ready to go coming off a long haul before.
The cabin crew were brilliant, genuinely excellent at their job and the food was very nice as well. You could tell the cabin crew were a bit embarrassed about the state of the cabin.
With how we collect points, reliance on BAPP 241 and not able to afford to just pay for business tickets I can’t realistically see us moving to another airline for this kind of thing. Virgin is possible as we can do the same game with them (241) but beyond that Qatar, JAL etc just need too many Avios I fear.
Will do some investigating.
@FarEastern1 – I’m not sure if it’s a uniquely British thing that people accept second best and complain about it but don’t do anything to make things better. Even in elections which are strongly contested like our recent one, US 2020 or recent French legislative ones, turnout was less than two thirds. There are lots of complainers and can’t be bothereds.
The UK as a country and British people, like most countries/nationalities, have some fantastic characteristics and other less good ones.
It doesn’t really make sense to compare BA to Asian airlines or ME ones when they are able to operate and are funded in a totally different manner to European airlines. The comparison should really be with other European former state carriers and to a slight extent, US carriers.
@FarEastern1
It doesn’t really make sense to compare BA to Asian airlines or ME ones when they are able to operate and are funded in a totally different manner to European airlines. The comparison should really be with other European former state carriers and to a slight extent, US carriers.I get the impression that I am significantly younger than you.
Would it be be fair to say that BA was previously funded in similar way to how the ME airlines are funded today? How much did BA pay for their Concorde aircraft? Perhaps (great) Britain and the USA was built in a similar fashion to the ME countries today?No, it really would not be fair to say that…but bless!
@Cranzle – yes, you sound much younger! I’m 62. BA was entirely state funded and overall loss making until privatisation in 1987 after the merger of BEA and BOAC. I wouldn’t entirely equate BA to the ME3 because BA is principally designed to cater for home grown traffic with some connecting traffic as a bonus. KLM looked more like an ME3 as it is/was a huge airline for a tiny home market, so it was always principally a connection traffic operation and Schiphol was designed for that.
Concorde was an Anglo-French project and neither BA nor Air France really had to pay for the aircraft which was really operated for prestige and uniqueness.
European airlines are generally saddled with much higher salary costs and pension costs than other operators. The pensions issues has been a huge millstone for BA and LH. The AF pension fund is paid by the state and in the Netherlands pensions are differently funded. Other operating conditions like congested airports/skies and higher costs including 261 make European airlines very uncompetitive and the EU bans government subsidies, hence all the sector historic bankruptcies – Swissair, Alitalia, Olympic, Cyprus Airways and more recently SAS, TAP (bailed out by the government) and Air Malta as well as the smaller East European operators. Europe also has the most incredibly vibrant LCC market that competes very strongly for European traffic.
ME3 airlines enjoy huge subsidies, uncongested airports that the airlines own and can operate 24/7, cheap services so they can afford fancy onboard service and much higher cabin crew/passenger ratios. The US airlines have almost all been through bankruptcy which has enabled them to shed historic liabilities and reduce costs/salaries, they have a huge highly uncompetitive (ie super profitable) domestic market that they can use to compete in international markets. Those airlines also received huge non repayable cash handouts during covid. BA & Virgin were told, no government help until you have tried to help yourselves and don’t expect any favourable terms if you come begging.
Asia is very mixed. Cathay is the closest look to BA as an independently funded private operator with a rich but not stupidly rich owner. They get virtually no governmental support. Thai and Malaysian have been bust but still supported by their governments. Garuda is bankrupt. SQ was an early and top quality transfer passenger operator before the ME3. It is still majority owned by the government who also own the airport and facilities, so it has rather privileged access.
I flew a BA 787-9 (G-ZBKC for anyone that cares) LHR-MEX back in June and it was the same – seat recline didn’t work, touch screen barely worked, remote was broken completely, headphone jack was almost broken, window dimmer button was almost gone… The plane was less than 9 years old but it felt like 30! They also ran out of meals straight away, but I complained about the poor condition of the cabin and got a bunch of Avios as an apology. Sad to read that the A380s are in the same state, but unfortunately they still seem to be using Covid as an excuse for the delay to the refitting.
Make sure you and your companions record all the issues, then complain to BA after the flight. They are generally pretty good at compensation with Avios for even minor issues.
Yes you will likely get decent compensation in avios for it.
Per the (very long) Flyertalk thread about A380 issues – there are questions about how they were stored during covid when out of use. But, in the current era, there are spare parts supply issues and the fleet is being worked very hard.
There aren’t enough airframes for the planned schedule; if they were in all 18 months old there would be, but they have a lot of technical issues which are compounding over time as there isn’t enough slack in the schedule to fix stuff which isn’t a go/no-go item for dispatch. Hence faults like broken seats (and the dreaded inop APU) are accumulating over time. I dread to think how much tie-wraps-and-bodge-tape is out of view in the non-safety-critical parts of the things by now.
Personally – it seems to me they need to cancel an A380 rotation so that the timetable is achievable, and try to get on top of the maintenance issues. Hopefully they’ve planned less-intensive use in the winter schedule.
@Cranzle – yes, you sound much younger! I’m 62. BA was entirely state funded and overall loss making until privatisation in 1987 after the merger of BEA and BOAC. I wouldn’t entirely equate BA to the ME3 because BA is principally designed to cater for home grown traffic with some connecting traffic as a bonus. KLM looked more like an ME3 as it is/was a huge airline for a tiny home market, so it was always principally a connection traffic operation and Schiphol was designed for that.
Concorde was an Anglo-French project and neither BA nor Air France really had to pay for the aircraft which was really operated for prestige and uniqueness.
European airlines are generally saddled with much higher salary costs and pension costs than other operators. The pensions issues has been a huge millstone for BA and LH. The AF pension fund is paid by the state and in the Netherlands pensions are differently funded. Other operating conditions like congested airports/skies and higher costs including 261 make European airlines very uncompetitive and the EU bans government subsidies, hence all the sector historic bankruptcies – Swissair, Alitalia, Olympic, Cyprus Airways and more recently SAS, TAP (bailed out by the government) and Air Malta as well as the smaller East European operators. Europe also has the most incredibly vibrant LCC market that competes very strongly for European traffic.
ME3 airlines enjoy huge subsidies, uncongested airports that the airlines own and can operate 24/7, cheap services so they can afford fancy onboard service and much higher cabin crew/passenger ratios. The US airlines have almost all been through bankruptcy which has enabled them to shed historic liabilities and reduce costs/salaries, they have a huge highly uncompetitive (ie super profitable) domestic market that they can use to compete in international markets. Those airlines also received huge non repayable cash handouts during covid. BA & Virgin were told, no government help until you have tried to help yourselves and don’t expect any favourable terms if you come begging.
Asia is very mixed. Cathay is the closest look to BA as an independently funded private operator with a rich but not stupidly rich owner. They get virtually no governmental support. Thai and Malaysian have been bust but still supported by their governments. Garuda is bankrupt. SQ was an early and top quality transfer passenger operator before the ME3. It is still majority owned by the government who also own the airport and facilities, so it has rather privileged access.
This was really useful perspective.
Just wanted to say thanks.I’ve only flown CW once. Back in January on a 777.
Was a great experience as a first timer.But I want to try other things in future and reading this made a lot of sense.
Thank you.I flew BA JFK-LHR about 22 years ago when they they first started the new flat bed in business class
Unfortunately the electrics on the seat was broken so it wouldn’t even recline. The flight was full in both business and first class so they couldn’t give me another seat
I wrote to BA requesting some for of compensation I suggested a guaranteed upgrade on my next flight to the US (I was using that route quite often at the time) They refused any sort of compensation.
To cut along story short after threatening to sue them under the “supply of goods and services act” they relented and actually gave me a free business class ticket to anywhere in the world (totally free no Taxes etc)
Interesting post, thanks.
Given that the new flagship Club Suite is also falling apart, and hygiene is very poor, it seems like a corporate decision to hold very low standards. But Covid shortages and heavy rotation sounds far better ‘we’re saving money in maintenance and parts’ or ‘we didn’t choose the right materials during the procurement process’
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