saintby

Awful lot of overreaction from the doom mongers in this thread! Ive done it twice as a pax. First time, the CSD found a purser to complete the paperwork before departure, second time the CSD put me in a CW upper deck seat and came back after take off to take my credit card details. Both times neither had done an onboard upgrade before but it caused no problems whatsoever. It must have taken all of 2 minutes to take my card details.

For crew to say they wont be taking money off pax for upgrades if you dont have time is ridiculous and not very customer or company facing - remember for a start that any pax asking may already have seen an empty CW cabin or enquired about loads and if it was me asking in that situation i would twig straight away that you just couldnt be bothered and i would likely write in and complain about you. In any case the extra cash pays your wages remember!

When i mentioned this to a Virgin crew friend she said VS crew get comission from onboard upgrade sales...

Nyghtwing

I think your friend misquoted the price he paid for a Y to J. LAX doesn't offer any $500 upgrades for almost two years now, and certainly not from Y, no matter how good-looking your friend is. The tactical price is programmed in the check-in computers and there is no way around it. Did he perhaps pay an add-collect off of the highest Y fare, or did he have one tipple too many in the lounge and meant to say the equivalent of £600?

Can I help you

As before, upgrades will be depending on a number of things one of them being time, as I have said before if there is time I will process these.
We will be using the same computers as we for our duty free sales and I expect like Virgin we will be given some sort of commission.
What a number of people don’t/won’t understand is the pressure on the CSD/CSM is constant; we have all the duties of the CW purser plus all of our previous duties and are having extra responsibilities added.
Another trial about to take place is with ground staff earning commission for excess baggage, I wonder if this trial will be as popular?

corporate-wage-slave

I suspect not, at least for the afflicted! This will lead to some very interesting postings here once implemented!

Can I help you

I can imagine a customer in WT paying excess baggage that gets onboard and then buys an upgrade he asks for the charge to be taken into account due to the higher baggage allowance in the upgraded cabin.

BingBongBoy

Are you sure?

A P Yu

I imagine business intelligence will identify pax who have responded to upgrade offers in the past to target.

I imagine these will only be offered after take-off - to avoid adding to the chaos of boarding.

The good SCCMs will find the time to do it.

Can I help you

You must be referring to counting the meals, you may not know this as you have limited experience but it wasn’t always the purser’s job to do this and just like now we had juniors like you to doing it.

Can I help you

That will be when the good SCCMs are talking to First, Gold’s and then taking the meal order in CW, so one of the quieter moments.

corporate-wage-slave

I remember seeing a thread here, on the lines of "what is the one thing BA can do to improve service on board", and someone said, quite correctly, "detaching the CSDs from all Purser duties". If this happened, armed with their iPads and multi-functional duty-free gizmos, CSDs should be able to make a very cost effective improvement for both the shareholders and all passengers.

[I can see some irony here: Pursers are so named because they looked after the vessel's purse].

BingBongBoy

That is part of it... But, you know as well as I do, that there is a lot more to do than just counting meals in CW that the CSD certainly does not do, which, if there were still a Purser instead of a Junior in the No.2 or No.7 position would be done by them.

With the greatest of respect, I know you see yourself as a good and hard working CSD and I am sure that is true. But, seeing as you don't work with other CSD's... I can assure you, you are in the minority when it comes to CW duties, before and during flight.

Lite

Remember before you get too much on your high horse, this is a trial on targeted routes with targeted customers. This doesn't mean for one minute that the SCCM on the day couldn't be bothered, firstly you might not have been selected for the trial. Secondly, if it were linked to commission then I'm sure an incentivised Senior would absolutely go out of their way to offer this. I am however concerned at the impact this has on other customers having been delegated to the SCCM. Having recently taken out a longhaul flight as CSM, trying to juggle having a presence at the boarding door, setting up the IFE for use during boarding, having the flight crew and TRM on at you for getting the doors closed and monitoring the ensuing hand baggage and seat assignment chaos is already enough even for experienced crew. Add in to this having to discretely sell upgrades might be a bit too much and something will have to give.

I think this is good news about a hand baggage trial though because the situation is getting ridiculous. If everyone takes their allowed maximum hand baggage on a full flight then there is already a very tight squeeze, but customers play at the leniency of the gate staff and come on with too much. It's really time for the luggage gauges to be dusted off and used and the number of pieces counted at the gate.

A P Yu

No, dont be silly, they couldnt do it at the same time. The good ones will consider all of their management duties and 'manage' those duties in the most efficient way possible depending on the flight. (Like other managers do in other businesses, when for instance shops suddenly become busy, or when an office suddenly recieves an unexpected order).

The lazy ones will assume its all too much hassle and not even try - along with services such as saying hello to golds and all the other 'services' which can get in the way.

I stand by my point, the good ones will make it work, and they will get great feedback and hopefully recognition for doing so

exilencfc

Personally I admire CIHY for having the balls to post that he's got more important things to do with his time.

Yahillwe

It is easy to judge while you are sitting comfortably in your chair. When in fact there is a lot to be done before the doors close and getting the plane ready for take off.

And if they are going to implement it, how are the CSD going to calculate the fare? What if someone bought their ticket with avios? I think it is best to let the ground crew handle it, they have all the info needed on hand.