philthegreek

As suggested up-thread I emailed Senor Cruz on [email protected] and sure enough received a holding reply from CR to whom the email was referred. However I am sure that if people with a complaint about BOB emailed to his email address it would become noticeable enough to be commented on to him, either by the poor secretary who has to weed his in-box or by CR.
I am awaiting CR's reply with interest.

T8191

To my shame I actually looked at the U2 website yesterday for prices JER-LGW.

bearing in mind we will be leisure pax, with 2 x 23kg cases [minimum], U2 came out at c. £230. BA, with our Gold baggage allowances, was c. £200.

So U2 is fine if you're HBO, not so good if not.

Secretsquirrel.return

Highlights (edited) from an internal messages sent yesterday. This message was sent from a middle manager level. To EF/MF/LGW crew.

................

Overnight on January 11 we moved from offering a limited choice of two items of catering to a full range that offers 25 different food choices and I am sure you will appreciate the complexities this brings to the operation.

Over operated over 3500 short-haul flights.

The majority of have gone smoothly.

customers complimenting on the quality and choice the M&S product provides.

Feedback from crew says that the roll-out has been challenging.

All issues raised are been added addressing.

Doubling TourPOS devices on our 767 and increasing the quantity products loaded on our Athens and Larnaca flights by over 70 per cent.

Demand for the product is higher on some routes and on a handful of flights - two per cent - we have sold out of fresh stock.

We can now track sales of our onboard catering, reviewing sales data on a daily basis to help us match supply to demand.

Your feedback plays a central role in these reviews so please keep it coming in.

All TourPOS devices are double checked for serviceability before loading and any device that fails is replaced .

We are doubling the quantities of manual slips loaded to allow you to continue to deliver the service.

Onboard support teams will be flying with crew.

We always knew that there would be issues in such a massive roll out.

We’ve had a promising first week and have some great learnings to build on.

Thank you for all the hard work you have put in this past week and I look forward to continuing to work with you to make M&S on board the success we all want it to be.

................

Safe flying.

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My username 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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GaxxyFlyer

I just booked flights to PSA for two of us. U2 was £220 with reserved seats and 1 hold bag each way. BA was £360 for standard (not HBO) ET. It was a no brainer for me, the lounge is not worth £140.

Deltus

Interesting - are they going to sit in the jump seats, or is BA sacrificing some revenue to fill its seats with IT technicians?

jms_uk

Apologies for a long post.

This morning flight to GOT on ~60% full A320 was my first BoB experience. Five minutes after takeoff curtains were closed and announcement made about complimentary service in CE and BoB in ET. Payment by cards was mentioned and no reminder about no cash payments.

Initially, nobody ordered any hot food, although a bit later call button went on couple of rows in front of me (I was in emergency row 12) for 2 bacon rolls. To process that payment (by CC) took few minutes and a trip to the back.

It was then another 20 minutes before the trolley came out, two cabin crews stayed in CE. CSM popped in couple times to collect rubbish and check on the two crew members doing BoB.

In the 6 six rows of ET in front of me and another 4-5 behind me, they've sold 2 more sandwiches, about 4-5 hot drinks, few soft drinks and 4-5 snacks (crisps/wasabi/olives). They also made some sales in the last couple of rows, although it was too far for me to see what. There was a lot of going back, either to retrieve items not in the trolley, or printer roll, or some tap water (during sales, not at the end).

Overall, the trolley was out for about 50 minutes, and as I far I could see (by the CCs), it was mainly Swedes buying. This was followed by a duty free run (no takers) and a donation announcement.

Had a brief chat with one of crew, she said it was her first day doing this, but with 6-7 years of working at U2 previously that it was relatively easy/going ok.

orbitmic

Personally, I do not think that this is the most effective way at all. The crew member my partner talked to confirmed that crew have been asked to provide feedback on those first weeks of operations. If you do not like BoB, just speak to the SCCM, tell them that you would like them to mention that you are very unhappy about BA introducing BoB and how it is negatively affecting your travel experience.

The crew will effectively have to provide that feedback as part of what they are ask to forward and it will, at least to an extent, prevent BA managers from cherry picking feedback to make it sound like passengers love the change because the feedback will then necessarily include a number of negative comments (of course, similarly, if you are enthusiastic about BoB, feel free to tell the crew).

My personal sense is that this will have far more effect than writing to Cruz who can far more easily discount the message, and if complaints made on board are in sufficient numbers, this will likely be frustrating for the parts of BA who would like to paint the picture of a change customers love and asked for. Best of all, you don't need to spend time on the ground writing, you can just do that onboard during the time you would have normally used to eat and drink and the SCCM does all the typing work on their ipad!

Deltus

I'm not familiar with IAG specifically, but in general as a shareholder, you can attend the AGM, and you should be able to ask questions to the directors. You can of course vote against resolutions etc as well, but as a private shareholder with something like 0.00001% of IAG's shares, nobody will notice that. Asking a question would at least trigger some discussion.

There was a news story a while ago about the mother of a cyclist killed by a construction lorry, and she bought a few shares so that she could speak at the AGM, and that company became one of the first to make its vehicles safer for cyclists. See here: https://www.ft.com/content/ca1fca5e-...2-00144feabdc0

corporate-wage-slave

That's a very interesting memo, I think it's reassuring that there is some self awareness (and they use the same uptempo management-speak as I inflict on my colleagues!). So very much worth reading all of your message and in a way it would be better, from a public confidence point of view, if they could share this with their customers to indicate they're not on a separate planet to the passengers.

The first point is very good news: I've no doubt that in the corridors of Crawley their new gizmos seemed to be wonderful devices, but get airborne it's another matter.

Though I'm loathed to add another bluetooth complexity, why not add a bluetooth scanner, like a magic wand (!) so that crew can niftly scan the product and then scan the App / voucher? The current scanner is built into the ipad and it's too clunky to manipulate in the tight confines of the EuroTraveller aisle.

BA should present you with a medal Secretsquirrel.return! Probably not how they feel about it....

Paralytic

Are you a well known BBC news presenter? Or are you a friend of Dicksbits?

Secretsquirrel.return

With the greatest of respect this is pointless. When I started flying many years ago SCCM was valued and listened to by the powers that be, we could go and sit down with someone who could actually make change now we have a wash of plastic managers who filter out all the negatives. It has now been put at the level of a form on the SCCM iPad. Which gets sent to India to be collated and stored. Any feed back to the company by SCCM or CC is mostly dismissed.

I genuinely am shocked that customers still believe the BA actually cares about there opinion and views. You only have to take a look at ET more seats, less room, one toilet in a 319, less crew and now bob !!!!! Would any of this be a choice of any customer?

Please DO give feed back to the SCCM but please DO NOT believe this is the best method of making a change. I do feel at this point the only thing that BA will listen to is any negative affect on their billions of profits. But then again I guess that no matter what they do people keep coming back and paying THE SAME for less and less.

Safe flying

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My username 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
:::::::::::::::::::::::

orbitmic

To clarify, I do not - in the least - believe that BA care about customers' feedback, in fact, I am absolutely convinced of the opposite. I am only trying to think of ways of preventing BA management from distorting feedback received. This is why I am pretty certain that writing to Cruz is completely useless, just like writing to Customers Relations. Both will end up filed in a quasi bin and a copy and paste response returned. My only point was that I do not want BA to be able to say that the feedback received from inflight experiences is positive just because reports will increasingly look like 'service was ok' or focus on technical issues making it sound like nothing more serious than equipment and organisation are at stake.

If this is useless too then I fear that the only thing left is for people to inundate BA's social media with negative posts, but I'll admit that I am personally fan of hijacking people's/institutions' walls with negativity.

Fully agree.

TRISTAR1979

Having done my best to avoid BOB by booking my domestic flights with BA Cityflyer to and from LCY, the system conspired against me last night. My flight (BA2212) was cancled after a creeping delay, and we were all booked onto the BA1478 @ 20.40 from LHR to GLA, and I got my first (and hopefully only) experience of BOB.

Shortly after take-off, an announcement was made that they would be starting the inflight service and referred to the Menu's in the seat pocket. He then apologised that only one payment device was operational and that it would take longer than normal to pass through the cabin apologising if they didn't manage to get to every row by the end of the flight.

No hot food orders were taken or even mentioned.

Both carts appeared and started passing through with one payment device being shared between them, this created an incredibly slow cabin pass, I would estimate around 12 / 15 sales made and it took the complete flight to reach the back of the cabin.

Given that I was a last moment pax on this flight I was positioned at row 20 of the A320 so I could see the process quite well. I was the first to ask for water that I am aware of and was offered the bottled water for sale, to which I refused politely and requested the free water from the back. This was delivered instantly, and prompted a few others behind me who obviously witnessed my request being fulfilled to do the same.

I didn't make any purchases, but did Bring On Board a Tiger beer and packet of Chilly Kettle chips from the Lounge. The crew did look a little confused to see the Tiger beer can when collecting the rubbish (at 5 mins to landing).

Overall, not many takers for BOB and the atmosphere had defiantly changed on board, with many grumbles audible regarding the new policy. Coincidently I did find the menu in my seat pocket, which would have looked good had it not been torn in two... obviously someone before me didn't think much of it.

This was not the normal enjoyable BA experience, and I didn't really care for it to be honest, although that could have been exasperated by the fact I would be arriving home 5 hours late. I will continue to avoid BA from LHR and LGW when at all possible, barring a repeat of the above scenario.

I should say, that my flight from GLA to LCY in the morning was fantastic, it reminded me of BA years ago. Bags of leg room, friendly crew, and a cooked breakfast with cup of tea and an orange juice... Just perfect!

kaizenflying

I'm a friend of a friend of a friend who is a BBC presenter. Does that mean I still get free hot water? 👍

Paralytic

Yes, but no lemon. Or cup.