kaizenflying

3 or 4 Gin and Lemonades on one flight? Wow.

ACARS

3 rd sector with BoB now complete. 2 domestics same day trip and a euro near continent. Thus far the only flight completing service was a flight to MAN with only 50 (certainly no more than that) passengers. Other sectors only the first 10
Rows max in either direction served. BA have really done this on the cheap and have clearly never given crew the opportunity to reherse or practice pre roll out. Its as if all the training was given to them in an email and that was that. That is at least how it looks. I will be bringing my own and in bad weather days extra after a conversation on a slot delayed flight. Apparently the edict to crew is that of ryanair. No matter how long the delay, absolutely nothing whatsoever to be given out. No water, nothing. Full stop. Even easyjet during an ATC computer failure day gave us free tea coffee and water and juice shoot thingies for the children. Appaling and given the zero exposure to lo cost within BA's crew it will all kick off onboard for sure. Hopefully common sense will prevail before police are called one of these days.

So far it seems little interest and much suprise, especially from connecting longhaul passenger into London. Lets see if the short term failures give way to long term success. I for one remain undicided if BA made the right call here, they clearly failed to prepare but then they are renouned for doing just that so no surprises really.

Leeski

Here are my observations from my WAW-LHR tonight (seated in 11F). It should have been the second BoB flight for me but a Titan sub put paid to that. Please excuse the poor formatting and incomplete orders, I was doing this while trying to not look like a creep staring at the crew the whole time. My girlfriend was also unimpressed by my geekiness, but in the name of Flyertalk research I just did it.

Service starts 2027, after a prior walk through the cabin taking orders for rolls, for which there was not a single order.

Row 5 onwards was ET, Club was served by two crew and two for ET as well.
9a Water
10a snack
10b Wine and crisps
11c hot choc
12a Tea and confectionery
12b wine
12d hot choc

These orders took pretty much exactly 15 mins to do, so around two minutes a transaction, didn't seem too slow to me.

15a Heineken and something food
17f tea, something else

2044 I stop observing and read my book, craning my neck back was getting uncomfortable.

Service complete just after 2105

Only one repeat PIN try necessary as far as I could see, and nobody asking/being given free water. On the whole the service seemed polished, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a great success for BA. Of the 5 cards I saw, 4 were Amex, 3 BA Amex, so presumably all being expensed. Hot drinks for the most part, I only saw one sandwich and one bacon roll requested after service started.

Hope this is useful to you!

trueblu

Isn't this a complete win for BA? They forgo GBP2/ sector from you since you won't buy the sandwich and instead have persuaded you to hand over GBP50 of profit instead.

All they need is one punter per flight to think the same and it probably covers the costs of a several deserters.

tb

layz

How would you draw the conclusion that they're all being expensed, unless the Amex cards were in the corporate style?

KARFA

Added to that, there is no such thing as a corporate BAPP so it does seem quite a bit of assumption that the BoB spend is all being claimed back on expenses.

Swiss Tony

I appreciate this will get lost in the fog, but I took two CE sectors over the weekend and had been aware of the risk of service degradation.

LHR-INN A320, CE back to row 8. 6 cabin crew, two stayed in Club the whole time.

MUC-LHR A319, CE back to row 10(!!). They announced 4 cabin crew but I wonder if this was plus the Purser as I think I counted 5. Again two stayed in Club for the duration.

So no negative impact, I'd say.

ENTP

One swallow doesn't make a summer!

GaxxyFlyer

this is good to hear. Most of my flights are CE or/and out of LCY so only on bob flight booked at the moment and that's a redemption.

Leeski

Admittedly a fairly large bit of guessing on my part but partly from the lack of alcohol purchases and the way they were dressed.

florens

Probably, yes.

ABZMike

On yesterday morning's LHR to ABZ, I was parched having made a 20 minute dash from the late arriving IAH flight to gate A19. Flight maybe 2/3 full but it took 45 minutes for the trolley to get to me in row 6 - I think about 4 people selected something before me. I ordered a coffee, offered my UK debit card. The CSD was serving and at least twice the card was read, I entered my PIN fine, it approved on the key pad, but on the main screen would not complete the transaction. After about 10 minutes d**king about I offered to pay with Avios, that went straight through and the coffee was quite nice, albeit served in a slight odd Tommy-Tippie style cup. The CSD seemed quite stressed about the whole thing (I was beyond caring) and she gave me her card and insisted I should email her directly if any debits appear on my bank account. It really is pretty shocking how the payment system is so bad. Airlines process in flight payments all the time, how have they managed to make such a mess of it?

South London Bon Viveur

GVA to LHR this morning also had 2 throughout in CE with what looked like a pretty big CE cabin with the curtain back to around row 8 or 9.

Calum

Some very unhappy customers on my INV-LHR, however they do do bacon rolls.

subject2load

I would say it's not too difficult to work out why this whole payment process has turned into something of a shambles. Not when you stop to reflect on the fact that - where the entire concept & implementation of BoB is concerned - cost-saving was always more of a driver for BA than issues of true customer service & quality.

If you decided to buy a coffee from the most humble of street stalls or roadside cafés, but the payment process took a full ten minutes (as per your report), I suspect you might think twice before buying there again. And yet here we're talking about a leading global travel organisation, with access to the most sophisticated technology / resources available.

Yes, the situation will (one must hope) improve over time, and yes there are inevitable teething problems for an airline that has never before collected payment onboard for in-flight refreshments. BUT ..... why was this whole debacle not avoided by some basic preparation & planning ....? Answer : a myopic approach to cost-cutting. Simples.

Many years ago, whilst based in Bahrain, I was invited by a Gulf Air manager to be a dummy (all jokes welcome ....) passenger for a CC training module covering their revamped First Class meal service delivery. The mock-up cabin was an exact replica layout & seating-wise ; and the trainees were carefully monitored by both senior staff and the dummy pax, who were each given 'scorecards' to mark the quality & 'serving' standards of the trainees who were there to offer the very same range of food & drink as per actual onboard menus. I can't speak for GF today, having not flown them for quite some time, and they have of course been through troubled times over the years. But the latter is irrelevant here ; my point is simply about attention to detail, and getting things right from a customer perspective.

I am convinced that it would have been a simple matter to hold a series of dry-runs for this new policy and thereby iron out - at the earliest possible stage - a good percentage of the problems we are now seeing.

Ultimately, I guess it all comes down to the question of just how complacent and unconcerned are senior management about their customers being put through tiresome delays & inconvenience - let alone the general hassle & stress being inflicted upon their own staff ; as evidenced in various reports here on FT by CC themselves, most notably Secretsquirrel.return.