Originally Posted by
San Gottardo
I hear you. But if people complain about the few EUR they have to pay because they want to eat on that connecting flight, only to not take what was offered at the end of their longhaul flight, or to spend a similar amount at one of the sandwich stalls at the airport for sandwiches that are better than what is offered on board (and there is more choice)....
I'm not sure if it was you, or someone else, but some time back I had a heated debate about free status bag and if it is or isn't included in the fare. The crux of the argument presented to me was "It's not that much money, you yourself say you don't always use it, so why don't you just pay it when needed".
And same as back then, will I say now - It is not about the few EUR. I am able and willing to pay 14 EUR for a menu on a flight, and frequently do. And I am also perfectly happy to pay more than 14 EUR extra to fly KLM to London instead of easyJet, and do so regularly.
It's about removing friction points. Because:
Originally Posted by
San Gottardo
Not that I particularly like BOB or would advocate it. Except that I don't think that we lose that much. Relations with the crew? They are happening, but not during meal service where all they do today is throw a sandwich bag in front of people, interaction time between 0 and 1 second. And the fears of turning them into sales agents: there are ways to communicate which make a difference. If they go around asking passengers "WHat do you want from the menu?", thereby implying that a sale will definitely happen and that they want to sell - not good. If they go around asking "Everything Ok with you Madam/Sir? Is there anything from the onboard menu that you would like?" - and if passengers then say yes, then the pecuniar element isn't a problem anymore. Who knows, maybe there can be even a better relationship, there definitely is more and longer interaction than in the throwing-a-sandwich-at-passengers procedure.
It's not about saying "Would you like to order something from the onboard menu?"
It's about saying "Would you like to order something from the onboard menu? Oh, I don't have that... let me see if my colleagues have that in the other cart... Unfortunately, they don't have it either. They just sold the last one. Maybe you will enjoy this other thing? Yes? Splendid. Can you pass me your credit card? Oh, no unfortunately we can't take those, do you have an alternative? Ah great, we definitely take those. ... ... why is the machine always so slow when we fly to Norway... please bear with me...."
Originally Posted by
San Gottardo
Again, not saying it's an improvement. Just saying that this isn't the end of the world, it's a minor drop in quality. The bigger picture is much more worrying, the overall trend of declining sevice quality has started long ago, this is just a minor step on a longer journey towards the bottom. We already lost space, free luggage, free seat choice, and many other things. It's not that the introduction of BOB is a fall from the cliff of high service standards to the gutter of ULCCs. It's a minute downward correction of already low quality levels.
The difference is, that you can protect yourself from a lot of the other changes in some way. Book an exit row, be an FFP Elite, spend a bit extra in advance.
However, you cannot escape BoB. No matter your status, no matter your preorders, the service will change, massively. Comparing AFKL today to LHG, or LHG pre-BoB to LHG today, the smoothness of the service and the atmosphere is(was) so much better.
I guess you could just book J. But, the service in J will inevitably suffer too, because supporting BoB will require more of CC involvement.