rapidex

Late purchasers of CE seats from XXX-LHR also find themselves in the same situation no catering loaded.Pay lots for a CE seat then pay an extra fiver for a sandwich

London_traveller

BA really need to change their policy to enable staff to offer a free sandwich from the BoB trolley - they just need to account for it properly - so this is a management decision/issue. It is poor service otherwise.

That said, OP you should count yourself lucky - on my last CE trip I was served this - fish and chips. Without doubt the worst food I've ever been served on an airline. Truly atrocious quality, and everyone knows that food that needs to be crisp just doesn't fly well. Hey ho.

cpdc1030

I declined my last "upgrade" on PRG-LHR. I would much rather have the extra legroom in my previously selected exit row seat, especially knowing that I probably wouldn't have a meal anyway.

How ridiculous is it that BA has zero trust of their cabin crew? Giving them no discretion at all on the odd complimentary snack is just overzealous and mean spirited. Surely there could be regular audits to find out if it was getting excessive.

A small gesture can sometimes go a long way to giving a good impression of the airline. For example, on AS flying LIH-OAK, the trolley didn't have the brake set fully and started rolling back, so I stopped it. The flight attendant was mortified but glad that a passenger had helped to avoid a potential problem. So she offered me anything I wanted complimentary from the trolley for the rest of the flight. On BA I can imagine the embarrassment from the flight attendant in a similar situation.

rapidex

Are you sure that wasn't Yorkshire airlines

ahmetdouas

I have been upgraded several times last minute (including at the gate) before on TK. Not once did they not have food for me from the Business Class. There is no excuse for this, it's just that BA don't care and think they can get away with it.

Barnaby100

Not haddock, so not yorkshire

mmxbreaks

How I see it: they're selling CE seats, knowing these (in essence) cut down the number of economy passengers that can be seated. If the airline has to op-up passengers then they should receive the service of the cabin in which they're flying IMO. With the knowledge of overbooking occurring, I don't think it's unreasonable for the carrier to up their food order volume to adjust for such a situation - which is entirely of their own creation.

PaulN

I had an OpUp LHR-DUB the other day from an exit row seat but at least it was to 1D so plenty of leg room. Was offered the full catering too.

AverageHighFlyer

It really shouldn't be a big deal for BA to offer the BoB menu free of charge to CE passengers (all passengers, not just OpUps). SK have been doing this for years for their premium SH passengers, and that's not even a proper 'business class' product (no blocked middle seat etc.). Especially given the ludicrous sizes of the new CE meals; topping up with a sandwich after the main CE meal would at least mean people don't have to leave the flight hungry...

V10

It's not a question of trust - rather that the BoB catering is provided by a contracted third party and every single item on that trolley has to be accounted for.

cpdc1030

Not sure how that disproves my point? I have no problem with every item needing to be accounted for. The point is why not empower the flight attendants to use some discretion? Have a category for "service recovery" or something like that for the transaction. It's really not rocket science.

LTN Phobia

Indeed you can, I can confirm that.

My husband declines WT exit row to WT+ 'normal' middle seat and it has happened a few times.

It came down to me to get his original seat back. I owe a few BA agents an apology for his creating extra work as the exit row seat had already been assigned to someone else so they had to do a further swap to get it back for him.

Sine then though BA seem to have been in an avoidance mode and they just send him straight up to CW instead, skipping WT+

LTN Phobia

I do not believe BoB catering is 'owned' by BA so I do not think there is an option for BA to be flexible with it.

I believe it is fully electronically managed through the terminal (including the payment and possibly stock control and accounting?) and there isn't even a facility to take cash. If that is the case, I suspect the only way it can be done without the extra contractual issues is to issue CSM a company credit card and pay for that, perhaps. (I suspect they don't want to bill BA manually for things that have been registered as "service recovery" for instance.) Then you get other issues.

alexwuk

I fly a heady mix of F and ET, and as a GGL I haven't been OpUp-ed for about 5 years :-) But remember: with the limitation of three Opups per year, why would would you accept a ET->CE opup and remove the chance to get W->J longhaul?

MPH1980

Following on from the other response to this - it is simple - If BA want to provide service recovery - they are going to pay the retail price for the items given as recovery. The company that owns thay wouldnt have it any other way - otherwise they'd argue the sandwich could be sold to the Y passengers at full retail.

Once you do that and you say that it is an average of 1-2 items per flight (How many 'food terrible - cant i just get a sandwich from the back?' type requests would they get?) ... it gets expensive fast.

It is different when the cost to the business is at wholesale prices.

It is the same reason avios compensation has gone down. As long as they were issued by BA the cost to issue was almost 0. Once the Avois company was formed and it sold Avios to BA - they became expensive to give as compensation and much lower limits were set. BA's ideal situation woth avios is actually that few are issued to BAEC users but plenty are spent by Avios.com, IB and Aer Lingus flyers. That way they earn more than they pay.