PUCCI GALORE

BOB can also stand for Bring On Board. Don't buy it and it won't last 6 months. I'm just wondering which Legacy carriers in Europe will follow suit, like Club Europe all those years ago.

allturnleft

What Club Europe thing are you referring to?

orbitmic

Unlike BA, U2 has no weight limit to the hand baggage that you can take though.

Passmethesickbag

That's what I've been doing recently — I was quite content with bringing a sandwich from Pret and enjoying it with my selection of drinks from the bar. It's those drinks I can't bring (well at least not the alcoholic and hot ones). A less reckless company would have taken away the crisps and started selling sandwiches and evaluated before withdrawing the free drinks.

I think more or less all other legacy carriers have tinkered with their economy class back and forth for years until they came up with something that is not to abhorrent to passengers. Some of them, like SK, tried what BA is now doing but reverted to free coffee/tea/water at least when their passengers deserted to the real LCCs. Current BA management is clearly too arrogant to have paid the slightest bit attention to anything that happened B.C. (Before Cruz). His ridiculous self-congratulatory excitement about his brilliant idea of serving M&S sandwiches makes me laugh. You're just 18 years behind Barbara Cassani and her Costa Coffee menu on Go, sunshine! But neither the company's history nor its future are of any interest to him, because he has no stake in either.

Passmethesickbag

Did you not listen to Alex Cruz on the radio yesterday? "There are meeeellions of other things that BA has to offer that Easyjet will never be able to offfer... all the generous hand baggage allowances that we have et cetera". You're not suggesting that he is lying or deluded, are you?

Quarky Quark

I was going to email the writer and on LinkedIn I noticed her profile. She is lifestyle editor at Business Insider.

So it seems the Indy article was lifted from Business Insider, which in their website does actually have a caption under the Club World picture mentioning the same. I'd guess it was a puff piece Business Insider were paid for and the Indy reproduced it (badly) with permission.

I'd still tag it under #fail for BA.

NWIFlyer

No, not so - particularly in tied houses. Food in a pub will typically generate about 65-70% GM when sold at full price. In a kitchen where the chef is constantly busy, the nett margin won't be that far short either. Drink will not realise anything like that amount (perhaps 30% maximum) because the buy figure from a pubco is (relatively) astronomical. The difference will be slightly narrower for a Free House.

With BA, I suspect it'll probably be the other way round, hence why we see charges right down to tea, coffee and water - and those will almost certainly have the greatest margin. Less than 10p worth of teabags and a bit of hot water might well generate Ł30 or more. Not bad money if you can get it, is it?

gcuk

I personally saw buy on board as an improvement when a I decided to switch my short haul flying to the most convenient or cost effective carrier about 18 months ago when it just seemed the only one trying to save my marriage to BA was me.
18 months on, I now tend to have a meal in the terminal when flying LCC. BA's outstation lounge offering of sandwiches or soup wasn't convincing enough to stick with and I rarely got to the airport in the morning early enough for short haul to enjoy the CCR or First lounge.
The point BA are missing is that I can fly Easyjet or Norwegian who, in my experience, are at least as good as BA on punctuality and safety and the crews are motivated and friendly, buy a meal in the terminal and the total cost is still less than BA fare.
As other individuals or companies realise they are paying another Ł10-Ł15 per sector on top of BA's higher fares to buy on board, I think others will vote with their feet. The LCC carriers really aren't that bad and BA have to realise they can't play in the LCC pond without competing directly on price.
As a result of my short haul divorce from BA, I've since tried other long haul carers and my long haul J travel is now split 50:50 between Oneworld and Star Alliance.
A marriage works both ways, give and take. When the relationship is such that one is giving and one is taking, something has to change.

sxc

Does m&s at the airport outlets sell those single serve wine and mixed spirits? An alternative to onboard drinks.

o0herbie

Unfortunantely I seem to find myself in an abusive relationship. I live west of LHR and almost all my flights are domestic day trips for business. I need BA, and they know it.

Come back Virgin, all is forgiven.

simonrp84

This pretty much sums me up too. I stopped flying SH last year (when they compressed the seats so I didn't have enough legroom) and subsequently thought 'why fly longhaul with 'em?'
Now, out of the 50-odd flights I've taken so far this year, only 2 have been BA. Previously it would've been 40+. Saved my company money and I'm happier. Win for everyone apart from BA.

(I still love checking this forum though!)

hcuk94

Fantastic airline ^

Can we have Little Red back?

o0herbie

I just tweeted VA asking the same thing, copying in BA and pointing out they'd taken away my G&T.

Response was "Maybe in the future but we have no plans at the moment. Sorry to hear about the case of the missing G&T's!!"

So I congratulated them on speedier twitter replies than BA and was provided with:

CKBA

It's (probably) the last straw....

BA used to have a good network - not just LH & SH-Europe - it used to really good at flying from regional hubs (e.g. Birmingham) to European centres. They (virtually) got rid of that.

The idea of the SH acting as a feeder for the LH is unfortunately not a good one. Having come in from the US and connecting through to FRA and Bologna (BLQ), flight connections of 5 hours are hideous. Take away the 'freebies' and you're really left with no reason for using BA and LHR anymore.

gcuk

Wonder if Virgin would do a status match