BA should be rostering crew who are FIRST trained on flights operating with a FIRST cabin. The IFM should be making the necessary requests to the DOM's ahead of the flight requesting a FIRST trained crew member be brought in from Standby to operate if they're crew down in that cabin. The reality is there's probaby not enough FIRST trained crew out there at the moment to do this and they'll have been told to make do with the crew available. Short of closing out F all together due to lack of product trained crew, then this is the next best thing I suppose.

The crew member concerned was likely overwhelmed with serving such a prestigious bunch of punters with likely high expectations over service and felt it may mitigate any shortcomings if they were open and honest about the situation.

BA really should never have put them in that position in the first place.