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Gold meal choice - first dibs?

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Old Jan 7, 2017 | 10:16 pm
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Gold meal choice - first dibs?

Are Gold's meant to get first choice on meals in CW?

About to depart and they ran out of starter choice by the third row of the UD in CW. Should they have sorted out Golds first or is that a little DYKWIA?
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Old Jan 7, 2017 | 10:19 pm
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Ive been offered first choice regularly in the past but on my last two CW UD flights I wasn't. I don't think it's a published benefit.
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Old Jan 7, 2017 | 10:26 pm
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Originally Posted by Vgravity
Are Gold's meant to get first choice on meals in CW?

About to depart and they ran out of starter choice by the third row of the UD in CW. Should they have sorted out Golds first or is that a little DYKWIA?
I think its more apt to happen for main's but when starters are just delivered from a cart, its hard to sort...
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Old Jan 8, 2017 | 12:11 am
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They used to... Haven't been asked for a while now.
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Old Jan 8, 2017 | 1:26 am
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They should and the crew should be checking with the lower deck as both decks should be treated as one cabin.
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Old Jan 8, 2017 | 1:55 am
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In my experience the UD is usually fairly well loaded with high status people on some routes/flights. Certainly on my last UD flight lots of people were displaying shiny bag tags.

Now that CIHY has commented I do recall some upstairs/downstairs swaps going on in the past, which is great if you're the beneficiary!
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Old Jan 8, 2017 | 4:53 am
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a fellow GGLer and I were travelling together on the UD not long ago and starter and main orders were taken early in the flight.

however, when it came to serving, the crew apologised and told us that he thought he had 12 shrimp loaded when in fact there were only 9 so told us we could only have the alternative (the goats cheese - which turned out to be very tasty).

given neither of us were addressed by name at any point, I sort of assume that the crew on UD didnt have a manifest or didnt look at it so they didnt do orders (or allocation) by status.

no big deal for either of us though.
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Old Jan 8, 2017 | 5:38 am
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Originally Posted by Vgravity
Are Gold's meant to get first choice on meals in CW?

About to depart and they ran out of starter choice by the third row of the UD in CW. Should they have sorted out Golds first or is that a little DYKWIA?
the correct procedure but often not followed (simplified) is to go round and gather first choices and if excess demand then golds/ highe civ get first dibs, others asked to rechoose (if needed)

Cabin crew can often not be bothered with this but if you are gold/have a high civ and it matters to you then ask the crew if they have taken status preferences and civ into account. If not get csm or csd involved and that usually gets it sorted out.

In theory this should not be necessary but in the new BA where the ZCruz crew unsurprisingly have no pride in the product I can't blame cabin crew for going through the motions as quickly as they can without bothering with status checks
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Old Jan 8, 2017 | 6:19 am
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On the B744 the correct standard is to take all the orders for starters and main courses on the upper deck and the lower deck, the galley leads (one on each deck) then get together and count all the orders, if they are short of anything they should then refuse choices in the order of staff, upgrades and cardholders by level.
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Old Jan 8, 2017 | 6:45 am
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This topic has been discussed for many a year on this forum.....certainly years before Alex Cruz appeared at BA. The poor guy seems to get the blame for everything. Here's a thread from 2010 which explains the topic. There are ones going as far back as 2002 and probably even earlier.

GCH meal choice priority abolished
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