Originally Posted by
travelmad478
i think you started this thread to broadcast your own opinion, not to test any perception. Others' perceptions seem to be quite different from yours, but you have ignored them.
Every BA flight I have ever taken to India has served an Indian vegetarian meal, including Indian breads. None of this is served on non-Indian BA flights. That is hardly "taking the captive Indian market for granted" or acting "lazy and smug."
BA's Indian flights have several, not one, Indian cabin crew working on all Indian flights. All announcements are made in Hindi as well as English, and at the beginning of the flight there is a mention made of all the different Indian languages spoken by the cabin crew. Indian movies are included on the IFE. What more do you expect? Are the pilots supposed to be Indian, too?
You are just wrong. I have no idea what flights you have been taking, but they are certainly not BA's.
re the meal, I was responding to a specific post, please see the post quoted.
Your unsolicited opinion on my posting intentions is noted with amusement. I am indeed expressing my own opinion. I have no experience of expressing anyone elses
I am generalising about European airlines just as the posts I refer to generalise about India and Indians.
Your sensitivity re BA is therefore inexplicable -- i have not referred to BA in particular in my post. Even so, if you care to read Keysers posts in this thread you will see that there are issues with BA specifically.
Adding ethnic touches to a route specific hard product, throwing in Indian cabin crew and making annouincements in Hindi etc are all good things to do. They are necessary but not sufficient. .
The attitude: ""we speak your lingo, we give you your native food, you get your entertainment so now shut up and behave"" will need to change and it is this that management needs to get less smug about.
Product delivery is not the same in a service industry as product existence And when there is evidence that things are not going well: eg cabin crew behaviour is worse on a specific route or in a specific market
and (motivating this thread) there are posts from cabin crew expressing their distaste for operating routes to the market -- then it is important to work hard at addressing the issues
Finally if you read my response to Keysers last post you will see I have plenty of experience on BA and some affection for the airline but nevertheless feel that product delivery is poorer in some markets (not just South Asia) compared to others.
I dont think there are any Indian pilots left to recruit for global operations even if BA wished to do so There are on the other hand European pilots on the Indian airlines and they do a good job too.