GentleGiant

This is what we will need - Rum Runners!

Usually used to sneak booze on to cruises, but coming soon to a BA flight near you

lost_in_translation

Is there a sub-100ml size? :P

skba1

First experience today ARN-LHR on BA777:

A few minutes after the seatbelt sign went off came an announcement that in ET there was food and drinks for purchase.

About 5 mins later orders are taken for hot food. I observe one order in row 8 (I am in 11, ET starts at row 6) and one in row 9, appears to be no other takers in the cabin although I may have missed a quick order at the back.

A further 5-8 mins later (about 15 mins after seatbelt sign off) the service starts. Front cart with 2 crew, with one POS having issues. Ends up with them only using the one working which makes it rather slow. However they move through the cabin, with the third crew member assisting them from the back [I saw the cart out early on, but appears they gave up with that as it was too inconvenient]. They were out of certain items by row 12/13, but I think they found extras in the other cart. It was hard to hear much beyond that. After about an hour after the seatbelt sign was off they were still not through the cabin, although they had fewer than 5 rows to go.

After that I dozed off in a nap...

Cabin factor in ET appeared to be 70-80%, so reasonably full, but not rammed by any means. I would estimate around one order per row, maybe a little more. Many were sleeping on this early flight though... Another point is that ARN T2 has virtually no food airside; only one very overpriced café that makes the onboard food look dirt cheap. Hence one can assume that a lot of people without status may elect to eat on board.

Appeared to be no major issues, although not having 2 carts fully manned means it is slow, and not having full force POS working also makes it slow. Had this been ARN-CPH or similar length; which e.g. SK serves a similar selection for only 30-50% of the cabin would have been served. So for band 1 and band 2 flights I do think this is an issue.

The only one thing that I personally think is an improvement is that there is Magners on the menu! I haven't seen a cider on board since I last flew Ryanair in 2011... [I don't drink beer, but love cider] When it comes to the food offering I guess it is better than what was offered for free in the last year or so - but then again I virtually never eat on the plane unless it is a proper meal.

When I landed and got into CCR I had to have 3 glasses of apple juice to cure my dry throat. Not having access to free (proper) water and tea/juice etc. really is a killer. [And I really don't think that I should have to pay for basic things like water on a legacy carrier, especially not with top tier status. Hence I will fly other options until this changes.

subject2load

That's absolutely fair comment, and shows that perhaps I expressed my point not as well as I should. It's never been my intention, as an FT aficionado, to make 'peculiar posts', so apologies for any misunderstanding.

My reference to follow-up posts was in relation to any (potential) attempts to imply that the report was fictional or exaggerated : which I would personally find distasteful, given the particular scenario described.

And yes - for sake of absolute clarity - I agree that we should, without doubt, be glad to hear from all FT-ers, including of course those with positive BoB experiences.

Tobias-UK

This is FT, when we discuss alcohol and tool please don't confuse a 'tool' with a medical instrument!

layz

Sounds like the crew were scared that if word got out they were giving freebies they may have received disciplinary action! Of course we've been told here many times that a cup of 'tap' water is allowed, but perhaps not everyone remembered correctly or paid full attention and just heard they couldn't give anything away complimentary.

I had something similar on GNER (East Coast trains) many years ago, I had got on a train and was taking antibiotics at the time, needed water and forgot to bring wallet with me (I did have my ticket though!), walked to the counter, explained the situation and they got me one of the complimentary bottles from first class.

Very worrying that some member of crew thought they were not able to even give out a complimentary plastic cup!

This is also the reason why when I have good service on board that involves frequent top ups of drinks, etc I just say they provided an excellent service when sending in a welldone rather than go into the specifics. I could imagine in the current climate even if I was on a paid F ticket some crew would get told off for being over generous with the champagne!

vibguy

I am also looking out for positive reactions. It is utmost interesting to read how some people turn the fact that they now have to pay for a drink, whereas the same drink was free before, into a positive feedback. Or how people flying First and paying hefty ticket prices are now excited that they are allowed to pay extra for water on their domestic feeder leg.
BA has adopted the same almost unique food/drink policy as Spirit Airlines (with nothing for free, not even for top tier frequent flyers). I still have to read positive feedback about this Spirit policy. Spirit is rated as one of the worst airlines in the world.

Tobias-UK

I think in the context of this topic the definition of 'positive' is a subjective one.

scillyisles

Agreed - even former BA apologists are having a hard time putting some positive spin on this although I think we have had at least one post from a prolific poster that tried to imply it was a case of "move along nothing to see here". Kudos to those people who after their experiences indicate they will not be flying BA short haul again - the only way current BA management will take note is when their bonuses look threatened.
The post concerning the refusal to give water to the lady needing to take her medicine really needs to be sent to the Press - they would have a field day with it.

layz

There are some positives:
- Ale (ok, only Old Speckled Hen, they could have done better) in Euro Traveller/UK Domestic the choice was lager or lager and if you wanted ale you were out of luck on a domestic (sometimes in ET someone would fetch one from CE if no one was drinking them).
- Champagne (OK, it's Monopole!) or prosecco
- Better tea and coffee
- Is the wine better? Last time I tried wine on a domestic was 2012 and it was so awful I've not attempted it again.
- Hot food (although it turns out on the NCL-LHR route they shouldn't have offered it, they did on my flight and I love a bacon roll anytime of day)

The negatives:
- Ale, at least we have some, but there's so many better options and most craft breweries make their beers available in the 330ml cans BA like to stock
- Reduced lager selection - goodbye Tiger!
- Food selection is not extensive enough for longer flights
- I don't think the spirit selection has improved, so they're getting the same thing but having to pay for it
- Water served from a bottle should be free on any airline

As someone who's Avios rich (thanks Raffles) I can cope with paying the inflated Avios rates for this offering so I can see some advantages. However overall I agree it's a downgrade, I don't need a bacon roll on such a short flight, the Forest Feast would have done.

miamiflyer8

About this 6 month trial stuff? Could another reason be that it indeed is a trial when routes out of STN and LCY still have complimentary items?

Orange.Man

There is also a safety aspect to this as well, whilst I am totally against BA doing BoB, you cannot use this against BoB when it's entirely separate.

If you ever walk down a cabin during a flight and look, you'll notice how many passengers have removed their lids from their hot drinks. Which is all fine until they hit turbulence, get burnt and then the Cabin Crew have to give First Aid.

There was a law suit against easyJet about 20 years ago I think, where a woman boarded with an un-lided hot drink, and got burnt by her own hot drink. She then sued easyJet and won a substantial amount of money (around 30k iirc.)

Morale of the story, if you're going to board a plane with a hot drink, keep the lid on it or the drink ain't coming with you.

miamiflyer8

Well I never carry hot liquids on the go without lids. I have occasionally had to sneak coffee on to a public bus in a paper cup and then put it inside my bag far from any electronics or other valuables, set the cup in the bag with the help of bulky items to keep it upright.

So I definitely have a way of getting around this...

Calchas

I am a bit suspicious to be honest. From my understanding, English courts are not usually very forgiving with hot coffee cases. Even when a bunch of children managed to scald themselves in a McDonald's due to the poor design of the cups it was not found to be McDonald's problem.

It is different when an employee is actually handling the hot stuff at the time of the accident.

But I would be interested to read this case if you remember the person involved.

Secretsquirrel.return

Good morning all,

Firstly may I say a big thank you to you all, for the continual support and understanding for crew community. It's is a very difficult transition for us all given the issues and many problems we have had to deal with this week.

Let me update you on what has been happening so far and what we as crew have found with BOB. As BOB ends its 1st week online with BA there is still a lot of issues and they vary from flight to flight. Below are the main factors :

POS not working (i.e. Failed transactions, crashing, not set for flight, dead)
F&B loading (stock incorrectly or not loaded, or low stock loaded)
Sales, Route & Flight time (uptake of product vastly varies on different routes)
Human factor (crew their experience, speed of service, consumer interaction)

POS : This system is pretty awful even when it works well. As I mentioned before it takes 7 steps for one item sale add a step for each additional item. We still have POS loaded that don't work at all and some with continual crashing, when they crash you need to re log into the POS which takes time. Also a common issue is the card reader not connecting to the POS software. When this happens the sale shows up the customer puts the card in, enters pin, card reader says approved, but the POS software has not registered the sale i.e. No payment taken. This is very unsettling for a customer as they have seen the green tick and the word approved.

F&B: The issues with this are starting to settle down I must say. The company are looking at the requirements for individual routes and aircraft types ( especially the 767. ) and loading accordingly. The 767 is most problematic but this is been worked on so hopefully the food issue will be ironed out asap. But this will be the easiest issue to sort out. We still will always have a issue with being unable to sell any product food or drink if the POS is not working AND we have NO credit card slips. If you consider 200 customers on a 767 each way that's has the max potential of 400 sales i.e. ( not that everyone will buy of course) but then are only loading 20/50 slips per flight. So that's a max of 50 sales for both sectors.

Sales, Route & Flight time: Given that the above 2 points are in order, working POS and F&B loaded correctly. This factor has an impact on delivery of service and if customers will even get served. If we have a high sales uptake (1 in 6) that's approx one customer per row (aircraft dependent). The service will fail, the only way we would manage to complete this service is with 4 cc at the rear of the cabin. 2 cc on each bar, this would mean adding 2 cc to a 319, 1 cc to a 320 and 3 cc to a 767. This will leave 1 cc one the Airbus to work CE and 2 on the 767. This will never happen BA will NOT increase the crew Matrix, they would be taking a backward step and reinstating cc they took off resulting in the 2010 strike. (I can dream though) .

Human Factor: This to me is a difficult one, I am very tech savvy ( otherwise I would not have the guts to post any of this ) But not everyone is, in fairness some cc have been doing with out tech in this lives for years. So some are finding it difficult to get to grips with a badly designed interface. Please understand that the POS sw is badly designed and not iPad friendly as you might expect. If fact BA must be the only company to take such a simple easy to use device and turn it on it head. But we now have road shows in our report canter, and talk of a training video so this will all go to help crew.

Another part of the human factor is quite worrying to me and I have found it very noticeable its interaction. I like to talk, it's what I do, I enjoy the interaction with our customer, banter, chitchat, listening and as we say as BA 'Being There' . Well that's come to an end this week . While delivering the service up to now I interacted with most customers. From giving a simple glass of water to topping up the 4th glass of wine and with that come interaction. Now with BOB I walk through the cabin asking if anyone would like food or beverage purchases. On a flight this is not busy ( no sales ) 95 % of customers don't even make eye contact, customers that do either smile and shake their head or make a purchase and thats it. As for me I need to move on to the next row as quickly as possible as I don't know how busy I will be (again all depends on flight time, sales and route).

CE has changed slightly too, I find that depending how the BOB is going in ET will add the issue of being left alone in CE and once again pressure on getting a full service completed. Before I would have had the back up of cc from the rear coming up to help as soon as they finished the free pass service which was always completed. So again interaction is reduced in CE to an extent.

All in all the service is getting better the company is working on getting it right, but I feel the bigger picture is not the fact of BOB. It's going to change the whole feeling of that interaction our customers have had with the crew on BA for years. BA have been told for years by you that it's the staff that make the journey, it's our customer service and presence that is a factor in booking with us.

Now in times of delays, disruption we can still offer our knowledge and experience and have that interaction. But will not be able to offer a service or complimentary drink to help. During a normal service we have to concentrate on getting to all customers in the available flight time as such reducing that very important interaction.

After my 1st week of BOB I feel drained, tired, devalued and saddened by what I have seen. So many disappointed customers, some very angry, some upset and others being rude to cc. I have seen cc pay for some customers, heard stores of cc spending there own hard earned money to make a difference, and stores of cc being rude and inflexible as well i.e. With tank water.

I hope you have all had a very much more enjoyable week then I have had.

Safe flying

Ps. Sorry I cannot respond to any PM but thank you to all that have PM me, I am sure you can totally understand this.

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me is not original I have used in memory of poster somewhere else who was a true hero to many at BA .
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The information posted here are my views and opinion . They do not reflect the official view or opinion or any other individual or company
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