Alex Cruz talked about cleaning in his recent Business Traveller interview:
https://www.businesstraveller.com/bu...ss-club-suite/
In fact, there has been a significant improvement in customer satisfaction in cleaning over the last year and a half. Two things have happened.
One is that we redefined and re-energised a programme which we call ultra-cleaning. This is when you take the aircraft out to do a deep clean, and that involves everything up to unscrewing seats, and is managed by engineering which has formalised in an uncompromising way that kind of cleaning. It has cycles, depending on the aircraft, of between 40 and 45 days. It means that any particular aircraft will be – well, not unassembled, but a crew will go in with these metallic toothbrushes and clean things like inside the trolley spaces.
Now both the short haul and ultra-cleaning programme is done and people have noticed. The pictures before and after are excellent. Cost has been a consideration, but once again, if we want to be consistent about delivering the best service, clean aircraft is part of that.
The second part of cleaning is the turnaround cleaning. We have completed the work in short haul, which means that we have entirely redone the programme. We have retrained the cleaning crews, added supervisors, and we think that we’re there in short haul.
What we have not completed yet is the turn cleaning for long haul, which is probably a few weeks away from starting to work in a completely different way which will guarantee the results we are getting in short haul.
It’s taken me longer than I thought it would. It’s been a logistics challenge, but I feel really comfortable that we finally have everything in place. It has not been about cutting costs, it has been about spending money wisely. And I think the teams have recognised the opportunities there and I can’t wait. I don’t think we have a date, but it will be before the summer that the turn cleaning at Heathrow will be fully implemented, and then we have to progressively do all the out stations.