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Old Nov 25, 2019, 12:11 pm
  #6  
Fly_IAD
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Join Date: Jun 2019
Posts: 345
Originally Posted by orbitmic
I know it hardly makes things better, but some days, everything just goes wrong. You seem to have had a bad crew, a cabana booking mess, and a pyjama mess. Catering ex-US outstations is generally mediocre to poor on BA and most other European airlines.

Poor F experiences are not rare, good ones are far more frequent. I'll admit that I have never had a cabana booking issue like yours, and whilst pyjama misloads have happened to me, so have they on multiple other airlines including QR, which many of us on this forum consider a very strong airline on that front.

In general, the BA F product remains well below some of its competitors such as AF or even LH and LX, but once you know that whilst top prices are similar to competitors, BA is the only one of the lot to also offer deeply discounted paid F fares for barely more than discounted J and plenty of award seats, many of us adjust expectations accordingly.

That said, however bad your experience, the sentence I quote from your post is simply not accurate, at least for BA F. Whilst, as I said, this is far from a leading product, the product as it exists not only hasn't declined but is actually better now than it has been in the past 10 years or so, with better catering, amenities, and bedding than before. The seats remain average at best.
I think this sums it up. Some days things just dont go well. I have had many short connections traveling with BA First and while I would love to have a shower I have made do with a quick wash and change of shirts using the bathroom sinks. At least in the CCR the individual lavs allow for this. I also think that the BA First product is on so many routes it cant possibly have the exclusivity of a more niche product like AF (e.g. personalized lounge experiences). Some of the concerns are also going to be addressed when BA does the planned revamp of the lounge showers which everyone agrees is needed. This is something many airlines have been doing in recent years. I travel a lot with UA and really until the Polaris lounges many of their clubs never even had a shower. I guess my point is that perfect doesn't exist in mass transit but at the end of the day I really think BA First is a decent product and often very very competitively priced.
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