Originally Posted by
QRC3288
I don't think I'm alone in asking this, a number of us who are DMs or fly F often have questioned the downgrade from 3 to 2 flight attendants in F class on the newly reconfigured 747s. The product itself is great, but when there are 8 or 9 pax in F service can be quite slow, and breakfast service before landing on overnight flights seems to particularly suffer. Something important is definitely lost from the pax perspective - it can even be hard to flag down a FA during peak times (1-3 hours after boarding, usually during a lunch or dinner service). Usually the FAs are working as hard as they can, and there's not much they can do to help it. I also have noticed that when J is also full or nearly full there is less room for J FAs or the ISM to come up to F and help speed things along (which I think mgmt was hoping would happen, and which frequently does).
Any perspective from a CX person who flies 747s all the time?
Well, it's call "cost-cutting". Labor is the first thing any company looks into cutting when the time is tough. Really the only way to "fix" it is for Cathay to make a bunch of money again, and management feel comfortable adding more staff into the rotation.
Of course it never occur to the company management that when you cut front-line people that deals directly with customers, that reduces customer satisfaction and cause the potential for customers to bail and go to a competitor. That's what happened to Circuit City. They cut half of their in-store sales staff, and most of their cashiers in the early 2000s as an "innovative way to reduce unneeded labor cost and advance the company into the 21st century." Yes for the short-run expenses when down and profit shoots up. The CEO gets a $20 million bonus for his ingenious innovations (as if firing people is innovative.) However, something happened: customers are fed up they can't find anybody to help them more on products, and paying customers are fed up when they have to stand in line for over 30 minutes to pay for items. Guess what? They went to Best Buy instead.