orbitmic

Not the most likely hypothesis IMHO.

Dubh

Just off the 423 from AMS. This was thus particular crew's 2nd sector BoBing. They had particular issues in pairing the printers for receipts. The first 3 rows took about 20mins and then they basically gave up. Felt sorry for them to be honest...

CatchThePigeon

Thanks Littlegirl for your views. I agree that once payment teething issues are sorted then this will make things better for all concerned.

I think issues/frustrations will remain regarding passengers who don't hear/understand that cash cannot be accepted. Might BA consider highlighting this in various languages and in bold red writing on each page of the menus? Otherwise this will continue to be a pain for both CC and customers.

Hope it beds down for you all soon. Would be great to hear from folk who have had a seamless experience with BoB.

Sussex Flyer

Yesterday evening's 967 HAM-LHR, only 2 sales on the first 5 rows of ET (21 pax) with 1 or 2 others initially requesting then declining. One of the card payments took a while to process but this turned out to be a card issue, smooth transaction when a second card was offered, prompting the crew to say "at least we know it's not the machine at fault". Had a quick chat at the back of the plane later on , crew comment on BoB 'it's a shame, but inevitable, and now BA have done it, other airlines that still have complimentary food and drink ( e.g. Lufthansa) will probably follow suit'

ppp909

Rough calculation (from an IT guy) - I reckon you can store an EC number and an avios balance up to 4 billion (way more than anyone would actually have) easily in 8 bytes of data.
128 GB of RAM is a bit over 134 billion bytes so you could store 17 billion accounts along with their avios balance.

So yes, it's likely that the device stores everyone's cards and balances.

Chip and pin cards do not need to be connected in order to authorise them. There is a code embedded in the chip which is completely useless unless the correct pin is entered. Of course, this only validates that the holder of the card knows the correct pin for the card, not that there are sufficient funds or that they are in fact the rightful owner. Contactless doesn't do this, obviously, which is why transactions are limited to £30.

Jonrross

I hope they were following a formal PCI compliant process for this that ensured the continued security of the information they had noted.

BA6948

Big confusion around water. A guy on a flight from Milan (£280) was refused tap water and was asked for money. Same happened yesterday on a flight from or to Oslo.

Mapman

That's just bad. And against the advice given in earlier Twitter responses from CS.

orbitmic

I think that if any of us witness such incidents, we should encourage those passengers to complain: this is simply unacceptable. The incentive structure is for the small proportion of less hard working/less honest crew to try and sell water rather than serve tap, because the latter is more work and less commission. It is important that people complain when it happens so that this does not become a habit of theirs.

scillyisles

Would be very surprised if the device stored everyones BAEC card details and avios balances as the operational logistics of synchronising the on board devices when avios balances are constantly changing would be immense.

scillyisles

Exactly and what do you think the answer might be - I would guess the Cabin Crew do not know what PCI is.

CloudGazer

I was thinking of doing some approximation too and totally agree with you.

The data lends itself well to compression well. You could use some neat tricks like no needing to include accounts with 0 avios as well as on bothering with 2 bytes of storage for the Avios balance (people are unlikely to spend more than 65k Avios on BoB!)

BA6948

- No food was loaded on the BA2953 GLA-LGW this morning. I can understand teething problems with machines but not having anything at all is just unbelievable.
- Angry Turks not getting anything on the Istanbul flight. They vow to take Turkish Airline in the future (well that's a no brainer)

A P Yu

Whoever allowed this to go live without such critical points on the Project Plan being met needs to be shot.
Product Distribution and Logistics is an absolute no brainer
Ensuring Contactless was really an essential for launch if everyone is going to get served on minimum crew.

ppp909

Why? Most people's balances won't be changing much at all. It'll only download the changes and that will take seconds with a decent 4G connection. Of course, there's the risk that someone decides to spend all their avios on a flight while they're sitting on the plane prior to take-off but that's a low risk, for the sake of a snack and a coffee.