agreed - this is indeed what often happens when flights depart "one light", utilising your resources across cabins to maximum effect - however, the crew matrix on a band 4 flight requires 4 crew when there are more than 24 customers in club.

if the service across both cabins could be consistently delivered (to standard) taking into account all of the other responsibilities that the crew have...then the 4th crew member would not be agreed as required. given there was only 3 crew on this flight then something needs to give and i have some sympathy that it should not be the operating crew's responsibility to make up for the lack of resource planning in providing the agreed crewing level.

all that said, equally, the customer should not suffer, how you square that circle is difficult and different crews will attempt it in different ways.

as i said previously we do not know the full circumstances of this flight or the reason the purser chose to deliver the service in the way they did......one possible scenario (pure speculation) is that this was the x-th flight the purser had been told to operate one-light, lack of crew at LGW has been a huge problem this year

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
all opinions are mine and not those of my employer