Originally Posted by
1010101
Nothing wrong with being cheap down the back and class leading at the front.
I agree. For instance, JL down the back is absolutely dreadful. The worst food I have ever eaten on an aeroplane. I am not even sure if I can call it 'food. Foot/leg room was non-existent.
1/4" (!!) of congee in a foil container and a stale piece of bread for a 6-hour flight. You don't even get any kind of food on domestic flights at all in Y (certainly not on shorter ones). You can't even BoB. OK, you might get boiled sweets on the flight down the back. They might well run out of time to even serve you drinks (no alcohol, just soft drinks) if you're down the back because it's a short flight. Domestic lounges have barely any food - maybe just a few sandwiches and rice balls nowadays.
However they have a very nice international J and F, and very nice domestic F. You KNOW your bags will be coming out as one of the first if you are in F, too.
Totally different from the entirely commoditised flying down the back with basically no service whatsoever on domestic and rather sad offering on short long haul flights down the back. I don't think many would complain profusely about JL and say that two sides (premium and commoditised) cannot co-exist within a single airline (many would profusely complain about the hot cabin on JL though!).
So, if they do it right, I'm sure BA could. But as I see it, there are a few elements missing from the front end at the moment. Hopefully improvements will come. Saying all that, my biggest gripe with BA is the lack of in-flight Wifi at the moment, however, so for longer flights between Australia and Europe I've been taking SQ and encountered woeful delayed baggage handling until I got put in touch with a helpful, specific person - but I won't hold it against them too much.
My view is that every airline has its PITA side because travelling often is a PITA and every airline screws up from time to time. The more you're exposed to them the more chance you have of encountering an issue too. I sort of work on the % irritation by giving each annoying incident a mental score and when the airline's irritation score exceeds my limit, I put them on my no-fly list. I have to be careful because the no-fly list may get so big that I don't get to go anywhere (I refuse to set foot in STN and LTN so it's a bit limiting but they've exceed my airport irritation limit by about 500% so I don't bother with them).