First off, I am well aware that I am lucky that I have the option to fly First and have done so with various airlines across the globe and I do so without business travel, I fly on my own pocket and because I choose to so why this is a very ‘first’-world issue, BA seem to be devaluing First further and further to the point that before long they may as well not bother offering it.

I am now less than 30 days out from my next flight, previously I would already have booked a spa treatment and my meal choices and had confidence I was going to have a pleasant few hours in the air being thoroughly looked after and if I arrived slightly worse for wear, that would only be because I took slightly too much advantage of the libations on offer. Now, the spas are, to my understanding, permanently closed so no nice back massage to help ensure I am as comfortable as possible boarding the plane and pre-ordering of meal choices has yet to make a return.

BA’s spa offerings were always pretty poor compared to those offered by other airlines but they were still welcome, I can understand the need to suspend them during the height of Covid, but to not restore them just chips away at the value of their premium offering. The one I really don’t understand is not bringing back pre-ordering; this is a complete no-brainer to me. If you allow customers to pre-order their main meal options, you can ensure you load the correct number of each choice, everyone gets their preferred option and you increase customer satisfaction whilst simultaneously reducing food-waste, a genuine win-win. Some extras will need to be loaded to cater for those that either do not pre-select or very short notice flyers (although gone are the days of the genuine walk-ups, I do remember having to do that when I did occasionally fly for professional purposes and needed to give an urgent briefing in NYC so was instructed to go to LHR and buy a walk-on return for Concorde), but it makes both business and economic sense to do what you can to ensure you can predict demand.

I’ve only flown CW once (after an involuntary downgrade but I had to get back on the first available flight rather than wait for the next flight with availability in F) and it was definitely a step down, the service and soft-product is significantly better in F, so I’m not in the camp that says there is no benefit to flying F on BA, but BA have lost my business by withdrawing F on routes where other airlines still offer it.

BA seems to have an identity crisis at the moment and doesn’t know if it is meant to be differentiating on cost or on quality meaning both suffer.