Originally Posted by Azurflyer
Me and Mrs Azurflyer just went over to Washington DC for the weekend. As it was 10th Anniversary I asked at Dulles whether I could pay to upgrade to F. Helpful chap at check-in said 'sure'. He also said there was a special promotion on and we could upgrade from J to F for $400 each ! He added there were only 2 pax booked in F so there would be availability. Great, I thought, $800 for both of us to go F. BUT the person in charge, asked to confirm the upgrade, said 'no' because they did not have the food available, and they don't like to put people in a cabin without the full service. She added that even if we had turned up with the full F fare in cash she would have had to turn us down. Now, we survived the flight in J (though whoever thinks a freezing cold shrink-wrapped turkey sandwich is a J-quality meal on an 8 hour flight needs to be shot...) but I'm wondering how much revenue BA is losing by not catering sufficiently in the front of the plane. A few wasted F meals is surely a small price to pay in the hope of getting F revenue (whether discounted or full-price).
Sorry - but that is standard procedure. If we do not have enough meals we do not allow any further numbers in the cabin - this has always been the case. Catering comes aboard and is ordered against the numbers that are forecast for any flight. This may sometimes reflect that fact that people are expected to come and book in at the last moment. Part of this is that whne you are in First Class we do not like to decline any meal requests because we have run out (indeed one major cAArier's Forum tells everyone how the orders ought to be taken so that this does not happen) . Staff have to take whatever is available. It happens, of course, (everyone just orders one particular thing for no particular reason) but not often. Unused food, and all open beverage and wet waste has to be diposed before arrival. You would probably have found that had one of you only been travelling you would have been accepted.
As it happens less than the number of times on the number of flights that we operate that we would be throwing away additional items, I doubt very much if this is ever going to change.