evacboy

Hi folks,

Not sure if others have experienced this, but recently on a 3-class LGW 772 (OAK-LGW), I was seated in 11A (last seat of Club, in the "small" Club cabin). Picked this seat for aisle access and not having to be in the dorm style cabin.

Anyway, after boarding, the CSM/Purser came on board and told me I would have to move as they were going to use the small Club cabin for crew rest. I showed my my boarding pass and he said he will go check. He came back a bit later with a seat in the forward cabin, but an aisle seat, which I of course did not want (window Club seats are far more private and easier to sleep IMO).

I asked if he had a window available and he said no. Then I asked him to give me the reason for moving me (and I guess the other passengers in the small cabin), and he again said they wanted to use it for Crew Rest.

I said I'd move but asked him to give me this in writing so I could take it up later with Customer Services. At this point, he said, okay you can stay in your seat, but I may not get dinner and drinks service, etc, unless I rang the call button, as they may forget me. Okay..

After taking off, I was the only person in the cabin, until after the dinner service, a couple folks came from WT/WT+ (not uniformed) and slept in Club seats for the remaining portion of the flight.

Any ideas what happened here??

golfmad

Shortage of crew perhaps to serve the small cabin?

sts603

That crew member should be fired.

corporate-wage-slave

If they are deadheading staff (this is a new route so they may be adjusting the rotations), it is possible they would not be in uniform on your service. But it sounds to me that they wanted to reallocate you to the main CW cabin for ease of service more than anything else, they do try to keep resting crew away from passengers but it looks to be perfectly possible to do that if they were on the other aisle to you. Still, it's all a bit odd.

justforfun

Glad you stood your ground. Completely unacceptable. Please write in.

paul4040

So it appears they didn't need your seat for crew rest, but rather wanted a private cabin for a couple of their colleagues. Do write in and let us know the nature of the fob off you get.

dptraveller

I think the worst part of this is the threat that the OP might be "forgotten" as a consequence of not agreeing to move. terrible behaviour.

The smallest state

That's great. I actually think the crew member was doing some other crew a favor. I will give the FA some points for saying, if you want something ring the button.

Good work OP on the "I'll need to get this in writing as I want to take up with customer service later" line. I will absolutely use that.

DYKWIA

Is the OAK flight daily? If not, then maybe the crew who operated the outbound flight were heading back, so the 'crew rest' was sort of correct?

I was talking to the cabin manager on a VS MAN-BGI flight a couple of years back. There was only one flight a week at that time, and the staff all then headed back to LGW that evening in Economy. On arrival at LGW, they then had to get a coach back to MAN! It sounded dreadful.

subject2load

And at which point perhaps you were minded to say something along the lines of
"Hey ..... Don't worry about me. I'm just a customer ..... you know, one of those people who (inconveniently) fill up your seats, in order to pay your salary ...."

You gotta love the BA prioritisation principle !

Interesting that the supposedly all-important request became rather less important as soon as you requested written confirmation for reference to HQ Customer Service / Relations .........

ahmetdouas

let's make something perfectly clear here; deadheading crew do not need to 'rest' as they are not working! So they should be treated as normal passengers, not people who should have their own private cabin!

corporate-wage-slave

On my Tehran service, a short overnighter, there was a group of deadheading cabin crew, they were in the other side of the cabin, and were indeed due to return the aircraft on the day flight back to the UK. But I didn't see any attempt to move anyone around, if it had happened it was well before boarding.

Can I help you

Firstly I am sorry that you were not in informed until you boarded that the second smaller cabin was going to be used as crew rest, this would have been because of the cabin crew bunks for some reason were unusable, a couple of reasons for this could be lack of heating or problems with the pressurisation.
The route you flew on require flat rest facilities for flight crew and cabin crew, as there are 10 cabin crew on this route they would have taken their rest 5 at a time.
If I had been the SCCM onboard I would have explained in more detail and certainly wouldn't have said you that "I may not get dinner and drinks service, etc, unless I rang the call button, as they may forget me. Okay.."
I am just pleased that the flight wasn't full as 5 CW customers would have had to be downgraded and if the flight was completely full 5 WT customers offloaded.

Can I help you

Wrong.

Can I help you

I am pleased that I can come on here and explain the reason for this, some of the comments made due to lack of knowledge are unwarranted.