Originally Posted by
Littlegirl
On the Worldwide Fleet, you have to wait until your turn to be First Class trained which is 10 plus years now and in fact due to it being a shrinking fleet, many will never get trained because off lining crew has a cost to BA and with no need for more First Class trained crew, they won't train any more on the Worldwide cabin crew fleet.
On the new and fast expanding Mixed Fleet, all the crew are trained to work in First Class, at first this was done on their initial training course but now it is done after they have worked for BA for six months. BA expect all M/F crew to make sure they work in all cabins regularly.
At first thought 6 months seems not that long, equivalent to a standard probationary period in many jobs. However, it's probably not as straightforward as that when training and associated assessment is taken into account.
Is there a distribution of crew experience in each cabin, so less experienced crew are working with those who have more? Or is it possible that the situation may occur that a cabin could be crewed entirely by relatively inexperienced crew with only a year or so's worth of experience under their belts? I'm not saying this results in a lower standard of service, just musing as to how it works.