FlyerTalker7654

Good point about selling food and drink at the gate, but then wouldn't people just go to Boots/WH Smiths etc to pick stuff up?

Have you checked out Air Asia's website lately? They have a whole area on buying food as you book your seats/luggage. Pretty good system, something BA could consider?

londonba2014

Ha ha, yep - unheard of!

streetmagix

I did this when I flew with them a couple of years ago, it works really well! They have your food assigned to your seat number, they quickly check your boarding pass before giving you your food. Quick, easy and quite affordable (at the time due to the exchange rate).

seattle29

Still very affordable (RM 10 or Ł1.80 for a hot cooked meal).

The new pre-booking process also makes you select the free drink: water, tea/coffee or carbonated drink. It speeds up the process even further as cabin crew don't have to ask for your drink selection and can just dispense.

Skyrocker

The service on yesterday's flight to GVA, reminded me of the first week when terminal 5 was opened! A total mess.

nallison

Well yes, except a 45 minute flight is blocked at 1 hour 30, plus boarding time, deboarding time, and then pax on connections. Suddenly your 'short hop' is several hours. And frankly, pax get on the plane with an expectation, whether free or not, that there will be something they can eat/drink, and plan that way. Who is anyone to judge them? Many pax now are not even getting offered a water, that is appalling.

I think BA may regret all the PR around this. Would've been much, much better to introduce it quietly, and most pax probably wouldn't have noticed. The absolute shambles certainly will be noticed even by people who didn't want to buy anything.

Deltus

You think most people wouldn't notice if cabin crew suddenly started asking for credit cards when providing the drinks service??

Orange.Man

Actually, that'd be the worst place to trial it on. Put it on the longer flights where they can take their time and learn it so that crew can get use to it. Doing it on an MAN or EDI where the cruise is between 15-45 minutes is not helping. If you look at this the majority of issues are coming on the short sectors where crew are under pressure before they've even commenced to get everyone served.

A P Yu

Majority yes, but when the service can't be completed on a Malaga or Marrakech (both reported) then something is very very wrong.

Orange.Man

Yet easyJet can manage hot items on the AMS

miamiflyer8

IMO it serves no purpose eliminating hot items on the short ones,

A) Not many will purchase anything, so time constraints are not too bad.
B) For the one that does want to purchase food it really takes no time to serve it.

Prospero

My observations from yesterday evening's AMS-LHR. This flight commanded a healthy uptake in sales. Crew appeared to manage each transaction efficiently and it seemed everyone who wanted to purchase F&B were able to do so in the very short time available although sales did continue right up to the Flight Crew's we're beginning our approach into Heathrow PA.

My Avios purchase was the crew member's first experience of this type, she seemed a little hesitant at first but she completed the sale successfully in under a minute.

One closing observation: the hot chocolate seems to be a very popular choice, if this flight is anything to go by.

Orange.Man

Well, I did get asked by BA Crew yesterday at Gatwick how my airline manages BoB and had a nice discussion about it.

1 - 4 Crew Members focussed on it, whereas BA seem to have 1 or 2 for CE and 3-4 for BoB. If you have 3, you've lost the war before the battle has even started.

2 - An iPad and a phone? We have a single hand held device which takes care of everything. We even take cash in most currencies!

3 - Lack of Training / Knowledge / Know How. One of the last things I learnt in training was how to use the epos system. I also have the plus, of not having 3/4/5 other crew who don't know the system either. I must've done about 10 sectors on the bistro service of just learning the epos system whilst the more regular individual served and helped me if needed. Compare this to BA where the entire crew are new to the system, they're training happened last year and it turns out they were trained on a prototype of a draft... not even the final product. So many of the questions the crew asked were answered with "well we're not sure yet" "well there's a few bugs"

The implementation team responsible for the BoB, literally have set the crew up to fail.

Tobias-UK

Thank you for posting, and a warm welcome to the BA FlyerTalk forum. It's particularly great to see members of the 'trade' here, even from other carriers.

Your post is enlightening, it does suggest that BoB was rushed in (perhaps to boost the Q4 profits and bolster the bonuses of the beancounters). It appears BA were keen to get BoB operating as quickly as possible. It would have made more sense to me to have commenced BoB with the introduction of Club Europe on domestics. As it is, lots of negative publicity.

lost_in_translation

Deleted - already posted.