Did EDI-BRS-EDI on BA COnnect - first time since the new pay for food/drink service was launched on the 26th March.

Seats now have grey leather BA Connect headrests. The crew give out the menu straight after take off and then come round with the cart and ask you what you want.

You then pay cash or cheque or CC and they process it using a handheld machine.

I tried the £5.00 breakfast - which was more substantial that the free ones we were getting until last week - and you get a full plastic cup of Kenco Coffee as opposed to the previous paper All Day Deli Cup.

There were 40 people on the plane and only 7 breakfasts on the cart.

The crew have a hell of a lot of paper work to do. They have a form to fill in which summarises the sales. They have to print a summary receipt from the machine and attach it to the form - then put the money in a plastic security wallet and bag it for collection by Alpha Inflight Catering. They spent the last 25 minutes of the flight trying ti get this done.

I also noticed that on the BRS-EDI run at least - Y is now the fully flexible UK Domestic fare code as opposed to J on the mainline routes (and also on EDI-MAN for some reason). This results in the BP printing out with an M as opposed to a C that you usually get on UK Domestic (which is actually more accurate and certainly less confusing). No doubt where J is still used as the full fare code the C will continue to appear and continue to cause confusion.

Business UK appears on the BP for the Y fare which made me wonder whether Business UK would also appear for an H and a B fare as these allow lounge access for BA connect but not on mainline.

Incidentally the full Y fare was about £10 cheaper than it was when the airline was full service - so after buying the breakfast and a drink on the way home there was not much difference.