Well I've done the first two sectors and some interesting things emerged. I got the upgrade on the outbound (bought Y, miles to J, upgrade to F), which was my first sector after requalifying, adding evidence to that theory. So I have to compare a HKG-LHR in a 744 in F with a LHR-based crew, and a LHR-HKG on a 340 in J with a HKG crew.

To be fair, there was nothing dramatically wrong with the F flight with an LHR crew, but it was all very mechanical and unfriendly. And one of the guys (an FP) seemed very nervous and unsure of what he was doing. I had a very long chat with the ISM who is now LHR-based but has 20+ years of CX experience (which I suspects help explain why the flight was done fairly competently - she was doing a pretty good job with the resources available to her). From which some things are clear.

The gweilo ISM out of LHR (mentioned here on a number of occasions previously) has a total of 5.5 years of experience (3 with BA and 2.5 with CX). For a HKG-based CX crew that doesn't even get you to Flight Purser, never mind Senior Purser or ISM. Out of LHR you apparently get the opportunity to move to FP on 1.5 years experience, which means about 60 flights on long haul; SP at 120-150 flights; ISM at about 200 flights. In my view this is utterly ludicrous. There is no way that you can learn enough about people and the situations you may encounter in 200 flights to be a competent ISM. Learning the procedures, systems, etc. is about 30% of the task of delivering the world's best First class service. The rest can't be trained - it can only come with experience; I have, I guess, about 400 CX flights under my belt and I still see new things happening almost every flight.

Unfortunately, apparently, crew management in London sees things differently, and is promoting people willy-nilly, without anyone with any recent inflight experience being in on the promotion interviews. Again, this seems to be a huge mistake by CX management. Surely there are two groups of people who know far better than CX suits who sit in offices about who is good and who is not: us (the people whom they are serving), and the senior crew (ISMs & SPs) who see up close how the crew react to real situations. The number of flights the people who are up for promotion have done is so small that they can't have built up a useful number of customer letters in their files, so the LHR crew management is essentially "running blind" - testing whether people are good at passing interviews rather than being actually any good in the real world.

Fortunately, on the return I had a typically wonderful team in J. I'm fairly sure the SP had more experience than the entire F-team on the way over put together (the 3 members of the F team probably had less than 10 years total experience), and she was supported by at least 3 other FPs and two FAs who were all clearly far more on top of their game than any of the LHR F team. My body was still on HKG time, so I crashed immediately we were off the ground and missed the dinner service. But within moments of me waking up (when most of the rest of the cabin was asleep) there was a hot towel and an offer of whether I would like anything. For the rest of the flight my glass never remained empty for more than a minute or two without a refill being offered, and there was never more than a few minutes between one of the team walking the cabin to see if anyone needed anything. The refreshment (aka breakfast) service was a joy to behold - a team of 5 or 6 FAs giving a wonderfully choreographed service, delivered with a smile, accommodating all sorts of requests without any fuss or delay, and generally doing what CX is (or at least used to be) rightly famous for.

So now, with more evidence of the LHR-crew problem (and a slightly increased understanding of the reason) I have a dilemma - I have another roundtrip booked (in J) with a mix of 744 (where I've snagged 86A) and Airbus. Although I reckon the upgrade chances on the 744 are higher, at the moment I think I'd rather take J with a HKG-based crew than F with an LHR-based one, so I'm sorely tempted to wait an hour and get the Airbus.

By the way, could someone confirm that I'm not going senile and that the salmon & caviar service really is getting smaller and smaller? On the previous occasion I got 3 pieces of salmon, a heaped teaspoon of caviar and one (!) piece of boiled potato. This time I we seemed to be down to two pieces of salmon and a slightly rounded teaspoon of caviar, although I guess in the new scheme of things I should be grateful for 3 pieces of boiled potato. I am reasonably sure that if a couple of years ago if one expressed a fondness for the salmon and caviar it was normal to get at least 4 pieces of salmon and two teaspoons of caviar, no?