NickB

Given the shambles that BoB is, BA should do what it did the last time it had an enduring catering crisis (i.e. the gate gourmet debacle of several years ago), namely facilitate and encourage, notably by providing bags for that purpose, individuals with access to BA lounges to take lounge food with them onboard. While this won't solve the problems, it will alleviate them at least to some extent for BA's most frequent customers.

skba1

Firstly, many thanks for your insightful and honest posts.

The above policy is the result of an incredibly stupidly thought through system whereby you crew cannot use stock from the ET cabin for service recovery purposes, or even to re-stock a CE drinks cart that is running dry (or lack of loaded CE food).

I for one have, since becoming GGL had quite a few upgrades ET->CE in the past year, sometimes losing an excellent ET exit row seat for a window seat on row 6 or similar - which I usually didn't mind because of the better food and drinks. However, being told there is no drink (or food) at all I would go ballistic [well, not necessarily to you poor crew!].

I have my only ET booking made before policy announcement tomorrow, and will report back on my ARN-LHR-PSA legs to see how it goes.

So far BA has got 0 bookings in any cabin from me after the announcement, although I will continue booking CW or above if price and schedule makes it convenient.

It seems incredibly inflexible from management not to have cash as a payment option - especially with facing the fact of a very badly working payment system for cards.

It clearly both slows service down in ET and CE, as well as leaving customers without food either because the card payment cannot be processed, or that they do not have a card to pay with.

I'm well familiar with the costs of handling cash [working in a cash heavy international environment]. But from an individual flight we shouldn't be talking more than a few hundred pounds max in cash - and even if that has to be returned to base we are well under £1000 for a rtn to any shorthaul destination. This does not require expensive security transport, or pose a risk for robbery. Sure thing there would need to be a cash counting room (or just a drop) somewhere at the major hubs, and an arranged daily security van from Loomis/G4S or similar to pick it up. This can be had for well under £100 per pick-up and a counting fee of around 2% on coins and in the order of 0.1-0.2% on notes.

orbitmic

That would indeed be a start for a contingency plan. I can only imagine how people feel when flying back on a long haul WT+ trip to ATH only to find that there will be nothing but tap water available on their LHR-ATH flight.

mrow

Perhaps BA should look at in cabin advertising as a revenue stream. That way EZY, FR and A3 could advertise their superior in flight SH products?

BA6948

Flying BRU-LHR-JFK on Friday. Leaving home at 07:30 for the 09:45 departure from BRU. One hour connection at Heathrow so no longe there. Arrival in New York at 14:20. That means being at the Hotel in Manhatten at around 17:30. So for 14 hours door to door I will only get one meal, the main one on the LHR JFK and one couplet of water. All the rest is either BoB or an ambient snack. This is how low BA sunk. I am Gold and reached it for the first time last year with flying exclusively in Y. Not planning to retain Gold anymore. Silver is enough. The rest is Skyteam. At least they value my business. I will report on the BoB shambles though.

BA6948

I was thinking of 2 things:
- A3 : missing your lemon melts, fly Aegean or missing your G&T fly Aegean, it is on us.
- FR and U2 could have a the compare us to BA calculator where you compare flight prices with all additional options. That would make my day.

gismo1554

So am I right in thinking you can't pay in cash at all then? This surprises me as I would have thought this would be a great money earner especially if they did it in any currency type thing. I've seen this on other airlines (I think AA and Easyjet both allow you to buy in other currencies) and find this a good way to use up otherwise wasted change on the way home.

florens

Yeh, no cash accepted. But I usually donate spare change. ^

cargueiro

My point was more about these systems not being available to citizens of certain countries.

Angola does not accept AMEX anywhere as far as I am aware. Payment by Visa is increasingly available at high end hotels, restaurants etc. More and more cash machines allow withdrawals using Visa and Mastercard (although offer very poor exchange rates). But Visa and Mastercard are no longer available to citizens of Angola who now have to make do with their internal payment system, Multicaixa, which is similar to Switch and not accepted anywhere outside the country. I have several Angolan bank accounts and over the last two years my Angolan issued Visa cards have all expired and no bank will replace them. The same has happened to eveyone else I know in Angola.

I have not visited Cuba for a while but I would imagine few Cubans can get Visa or Mastercard. When there, I found I was only able to pay with Visa and Mastercard in a few high end places in Havana. Outside Havana these cards were hopeless.

I would imagine many citizens of countries like Venezuela, Nigeria and North Korea also struggle to get their own Visa and Mastercard payment cards.

Tobias-UK

AA does not accept cash either, only credit and debit cards. Perversely AA Eagle only accepts cash.

rollingdeep

Flew to LHR-NCL and NCL-LHR yesterday.

On the morning I was in 27F and the plane was pretty full the cart never made it anywhere near my row before they had to pack up for landing.

On the way back I was in 22F plane was probably half full and they got to my row 10 mins before landing i.e. as the seatbelt sign came on.

In terms of items had my headphones in so didn't hear if they didn't have anything but I only saw people buying drinks on they way out and back. Seemed to go okay was just clunky and slow. On the flight back quite a few people complaining about paying for a drink. In terms of sales I saw about 5 in total on both flights but probably more takers in the morning for tea/coffee.

Each seat back had a menu in it.

wolf72

BA should consider letting passengers pre-purchase meals and snacks in advance, up to 24 hours before a flight so the service on board moves faster.

One cart loaded on has all the pre-bought meals and snacks for regional/domestic flights. Second cart is items to sell.

First cart moves down from front to back passing out meals or snacks to passengers who have pre-purchased. 2nd cart follows to sell to passengers who have not purchased but would like to.

Would this system work for a 1 hour flight, assuming 15 minutes to get up to 10,000 feet and the seat belt sign to be turned off and with 4 crew to man the carts? Or would it be tight time wise before descending and the seat belt signs being turned on and then having to collect empty food trays from front to back?

:D!

What exactly do you mean by any currency?? The BoB network covers 16 currencies and how would pricing work exactly? If BA accepted cash it would have to be GBP and EUR only. Why is your change wasted unless you are never going back to that country again?

Most of the coins donated to comic relief eventually get sold to interested parties for about £3.50 per kg (after running through a machine that strips out pounds, euros and high value stuff like 5 Swiss francs)

I doubt there are many (maybe even any) Angolans, Venezuelans or North Koreans resident in those countries flying short haul within Europe.

Visa and Mastercard are available to Angolan citizens, Cuban citizens, Venezuelan citizens and North Korean citizens who live in Europe. If they are reasonably wealthy and travel abroad, they will certainly have bank accounts in at least one of the countries they travel to.

MickV

My experience with BoB so far has been fairly shamboloic.

Friday past Belfast-London. It took the crew 35 minutes to work 6 rows from the front of the aircraft. Many complaints about not being able to use cash. The crew at the front trolley was lead by the CSM and was loudly complaining to her junior colleague about BoB and the lack of time they had to get used to the machines and how awful the whole situation was. I though she went a little too far and ended up sounding unprofessional.

The return on Sunday was even more of a farce. The machines 'went down' just before we left the stand. This left the csm hand writing receipts and taking down card details. He tried his very best but could serve no more that 4 rows. I asked him how long they had been given to train with the machines and he told me half an hour and that the feed back from golds so far has been very poor.

Over the two flights it was a total shambles and really reflected so poorly on BA. Granted it is new and can really only get better but so far a total disaster. The idea not to accept cash is clearly based on not wanting to have to collect the cash at the end of everyday and reconcile it but really this is just more penny pinching and slows everything down.

I really can't get over how poor it was.

Oh for the love of a lemon melt.

xenole

Some people travel infrequently and don't want a pocket full of foreign coinage that could get mixed up with their home currency.
Some tend to try and spend what they have left at the end of a holiday i.e. "We've got €18.72 left....what can we get with that at the airport?"
Some know you can't generally pop to the Post Office with a bag of Euros and exchange them back into £ so rather than have them sitting around for a year until their next holiday, they'll spend their holiday money then and there.
etc.