Originally Posted by
chongcao
There is a big difference between the café owner and BA:
Customers walks into a café to ask for free water without paying anything else VS Customer pays BA for the transportation and associated service.
Customer walks into a café and occupies the seats otherwise may be served to another paying customers VS Customer already paid BA for the seats and BA could not sell that seats for that sector during that journey once the door is closed.
Café owner's cost would increase each time when a new customer ask for a cup of water and very noticeable due to the low revenue compare with BA; BA's cost does not increase when passengers ask for a cup of water as all the costs associate with this particular journey is already factored in well in advance, and such cost is hardly noticeable in the grand scheme of BA world.
So you are really comparing grapes and watermelons here.
What you says makes perfect sense. In the end, it's up to hospitality. It's like in hotels. You pay 150 GBP for an awful room in central London thats supposedly 4 stars, and then they want to charge you 15 GBP for breakfast when it used to be included. My aunt complained, saying you made us pay that much for the worst room in your hotel, and you still charge me for breakfast? In the end, they gave the breakfast for free.
With BA, you are paying them to fly them. It is not free. So when you have a request that costs the airline nothing, which is boiling water that is from the onboard kettle (unlike sandwiches that are stocked and accounted for), whats the harm in giving the hot water?
I think too many people on this forum have been Cruzified, and dare I say it, some of them may even be partners in crime (as in they are implementing the BA strategy on behalf of Cruz!)