Originally Posted by greenpau

Following up on this - I fly SFO-LHR more than any other route. SF is home, I’m London born, my family is there, and my work EU HQ is in London as well. I love the LHR crews, and know many of them by name, and they know me. My point was not one of their service style and approach - they are impeccably polite - but the Polaris staffing reductions are a huge issue for the base, and you can see that from AFA Union LHR Chapter updates and discussions regarding “essential” versus “optional” elements of the service flow, eg PDB, single tray. The High-J 76L runs half of the LHR schedule, and that Polaris staffing has been cut in half from pre-Covid. FAs are closing ranks as workload is increased, but staffing not restored. Every time a crew works together for the first time, they need to agree specifics on how they want to do the service and work together. My point from the story upthread was that when a mixed-based crew operates a flight, that can conflict with local base union positions / sentiments. What the SFO Purser in my last flight described to me on disagreements in service flow seems plausible.