T8191

Not yet encountered a pre-nibbled nut on AA. I shall report here when/if it occurs

Concur on the Argie vino, though. We both prefer New World wines to the French stuff (usually), although we tend to pass on US Chardonnay

corporate-wage-slave

Again I'm very pleased with the reaction to this thread, which has had a lot of hits in the last few hours. Thank you for all the kind words.

I have say this is looking daft, both in terms of the "fun" sized Mars bars after the fine dining menu and the implausibility of anyone being hungry at that point. But it was really more useful on the longer flights where there could be a 4 hour gap on a 10 hour flight. Personally I would change this to the popcorn, crisps, some Do&Co extras from the dessert trolley (strawberries would be a good one) and perhaps some Do&Co biscuits/mini cakes. If there were adequate supplies of 2 fresh, 2 sweet and 2 savoury top quality items they could junk the rest.

This is a point I really want to stress. WW crew have seen every management initiative under the sun (and a few which didn't even reach day light). I cannot recall a time where management have come up with something like this and the overwhelming (if not total) reaction from the crew has been "oh wow, yes we love this and we really want to serve it". Now this is relevant since if the crew are even more determined than management to make it a big success, then it makes a difficult to overstate impact on the way it is received by the passenger.

I also want to mention this. The 3-in-1 roll is probably the best bread product I have ever had in the air, and if it was available in the shops I would go out of my way to buy it. The previous bread products on BA were reasonably good, but this was much better still, a light crust, well flavoured (I think they used olive oil to retain freshness) and a springy texture.

The French side of my family are horrified by my love of butter, but genuinely it wasn't needed on the roll. But yes it looked spreadable to me though it wasn't a fast service yesterday.


Yes I was offered a second drink. I wasn't offered more nuts, but I only had half the nuts as served, it was a fairly generous serving and I was trying to space myself a bit. I am sure they would have been more available. The plated question I think is perhaps over focused here. The presentation of those dishes, at a business class level, would have past muster in a restaurant, I doubt many people would notice. It was a fantastic piece of fish I had yesterday, and yes I would have had that in a restaurant and certainly not complained. The reaction from passengers yesterday was also very, very positive.

If you mean Do&Co chocolates, no, and yes that would have been a really nice touch with the tea and coffee. There was a pass of the Club Kitchen basket (I think one taker in Upper Deck). The dark mini trays given to customers was indeed new. Jon was slightly sheepish in explaining this as a "late addition", I didn't understand why at the time, but now I know! At least it shows they were listening during the familiarisation sessions. It has a clever surface to it, giving an almost sticky feeling, which will help keep drinks in place if there is turbulence or someone knocks their table accidentally.

I think it is all hand assembled back in the galley and delivered by hand rather than off the trolley. I would guess that typically if you wanted the soup and/or salad then that could be accommodated, similarly with the desserts. Vegetarians probably don't come off too well here, overall, since it's just a preorder tick in the box for them, rather than all the choice options, which of course is a key part in meal enjoyment. However the combination of starters and desserts may work as a good alternative.

The IFE is just the Panasonic system that is on the 86J aircraft, it's been around for a while now. There are no immediate plans for improvements to First, which now has, in my view, an inferior menu.


Yes the salads have flavoursome tomatoes and asparagus in them, as well as the aubergine. They pour the French dressing on top, just be careful to ensure some of it gets down to the bottom layers, it's quite densely packed.


The nuts were not warm (thankfully, I think that ruins their flavour, but that's my Gallic side). However my almonds and cashews were incredibly oversalted, the walnuts and other nuts were OK. I don't know if that was a batch fault rather than anything systemic. I didn't (couldn't!) try the sandwiches, but they didn't look dried out to me.

I don't want to overstress that, but clearly to legions of Goldies on their monthly or twice weekly NYLON trips are going to be taken by surprise by the new ways of working, so that's one element that needs to be explained. And secondly, yes there is an element of selling the product - this goes on restaurants (and horribly overdone in some restaurants here on the East Coast) but when done correctly I think it's a good way to ensure people get and enjoy the right dish for them.

A bigger and interesting issue here is how we have moved from the dormitory style "stuff 'em up with food while they are glued to a movie", to turning it into an event in its own right. From admittedly a limited sample, passengers yesterday seemed to put down their headphones, discuss the food with the crew and their travel companion, and indeed have a more restaurant like environment. You'll appreciate you can't interact over the trolley with headphones on. So except for those in truly functional food eating mode, I hope a leisurely meal approach will be continued.

Yes, the mains are taken like the previous system with the grid form, but starters and desserts are a free-for-all. However I don't think there is (and really should not need to be) a formal prioritisation built into main meal selection. If it came to that, perhaps as a result of mass irrops then I guess it could happen that way. But basically BA want to think they have engineered out the idea of people leaving the aircraft unhappy with their meal options. From what I can see they appear to have succeeded.

I'm glad to read that, thanks very much for contributing that, it is important that we get reactions from those who have tried this and I would really encourage other travellers to also put a few comments down with their impressions.

Here on Flyertalk we have the ability to provide direct feedback to the team working on this, I haven't worked out the best way to handle that yet, but putting something here would be a good place to start.


What I would say to my infamous friend is that I hope you get downgraded! So we now have a new area to play in, is First now CW Minus or World Traveller Plus Plus?

710 77345

Great to hear, motivated staff make all the difference to the onboard offering ^

ANstar

Virgin cook it all together as well. Its all in one foil pack, just in seperate containers within the pack.. but its all cooked at the same time as the other hot elements with the dish and then plated up.

Peter M

My big problem with BA catering has always been the lack of meal choice in CW or F, when flying with non-status family members. I hope BA can fix the "Will you be dining with us" attitude, "Ok I have fillet for you. Sorry we have no other meal choices available." I hope at some point BA will learn that improvements to food freshness, quantity, and quality still cannot make up for a lack of meal choices and treating passengers inferiorly on 4,000 tickets. The consequence of a lack of food choice, or horrible food and bad service, is that those passengers insist on flying VS UC or Delta One in the future.

Overall, any and all improvements in service and products are appreciated. Thanks.

rosenkavalier

This all looks great, such an improvement over the current offering!
Guess I will have to book BA CW next year to experience this firsthand...lol

Just a general question regarding pre-plated dishes: as you can see here, the level of finesse is quite high in terms of presentation of the dishes, attention to detail with garnishes, very aesthetic placement of ingredients etc...for the appetisers and cheese plate for example (anything pre-plated on a flat plate, not a bowl or plate with higher edges) how do they keep the ingredients from moving around or even falling off the plate during take-off? (place anything even lightweight on the side bins on the 744 upper deck and you know what I mean! it just rolls down during take-off)
Even the transport onto the aircraft involves quick pushing around of the trolley and brisk movements, it always made me wonder how they maintain the presentation...

Can I help you

The starters, salads, desserts and cheese are all covered with plastic lids which we remove before putting them on the trolley.

Betteronacamel

May I just add my vote of thanks on this.

Very interesting development and let's see how this beds down and/or see what this looks like with the new bedding. I sincerely hope that this isn't some sort of false dawn - and of course raises the question as to where this leaves F. On this evidence I may hold fire on my next JFK UuA to F!

For my money the improved bedding is possibly a bit more relevant as the current offering (taken together with the outdated seat) is just very poor. If you are not going to change the seat any time soon it makes sense to throw the kitchen sink at catering and bedding and on this evidence the catering certainly looks good. If I've paid decent £ for a CW seat I wouldn't have a problem with being 'over catered'. I can see this going down well on the longer west coast runs where a leisurely lunch is actually quite attractive.

Now, if they could drop the Mars Bars and Cadbury 'treats' (not really a high class brand by any standard) then that would also be progress

Thanks again ^

Jimmie76

Thanks for the hard work on the report much appreciated.^ The vegetarians might do slightly better if the standard of the VLML has improved. It will also help in F because the VLML is the same in both cabins. The Afternoon Tea in F will hopefully therefore be improved if there are better looking sandwiches (and they are better looking) in Club.

Jed

Many thanks for posting- it all looks excellent and makes the CW dining look right up there with the competition. Along with the excellent CW fare sale, it's tempting to book a JFK to try it out

Padmeister

Why can't people like you see the club kitchen for what it is? The idea being if you are half way through a film for example and feeling a bit peckish and it has been quite some time since you had dinner for example you can get up grab a bar of chocolate or crisps / fruit whatever and have a snack in between courses; I think its a great idea and I am sure thousands of other people do. I have not seen anything similar offered on other airlines to snack on in between the meal services. Nobody is forcing you to eat a Cadbury's chocolate bar or a mars bar but it is there if you would like it 😉

tedcruz

BA, finally improving!!! Looking forward to using it. When is it being roled out across the entire fleet?

Padmeister

Alot of it over the next three to six months; but in it's entirety to include the New CW bedding from the White Company it will be throughout 2018.

HilFly

Thanks, c-w-s, for taking one for the team.

Are there still chocolates?

HMPS

I beg to differ in that other airlines like QR & EY have served me sall items in between meals. Will have an opportunity to test that again in Oct.