What is BA First really like?

Old Jan 15, 2018, 10:23 pm
  #61  
 
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Originally Posted by navylad
[...]other than to try and make a stupid point that doesnt help the OP who asked for advice.

And as for this stupid term people keep using of proper first class I think it is rather stupid you have a product and the value that a consumer is prepared to place on that product. It is individual to a consumer what they want to get for their money; or else one could argue that the only first class is flying by private jet..
OT: navylad, I think that in over 10 years reading this forum this has to be one of the rudest posts Ive ever come across. Calling other posters stupid repeatedly is not exactly in the spirit of the discussion.

For the records, my most frequent destination is LAX and I opt for direct flights whenever I can: this mean I primarily fly BA going West. However, I have have often seen better prices on far better carriers; for someone who doesnt mind taking a stopover it would be a no brainier to fly LX or AF.

Back on topic, to the OP: I think the deal that you got is excellent for business class to LAX. Enjoy it! I am sure you would have enjoyed BA F too. The experience is subpar on the ground, and onboard significantly below other carriers that operate the Europe to LA runs. But, still an excellent way of crossing the ocean and spending 11 hours in a metal tube!
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Old Jan 15, 2018, 11:27 pm
  #62  
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Originally Posted by flying_pig


Back on topic, to the OP: I think the deal that you got is excellent for business class to LAX. Enjoy it! I am sure you would have enjoyed BA F too. The experience is subpar on the ground, and onboard significantly below other carriers that operate the Europe to LA runs. But, still an excellent way of crossing the ocean and spending 11 hours in a metal tube!
Thanks, but we are flying first rather than business.

Whilst we might have got a better service with other airlines it would also have cost more than 1800 per person. We opted for BA out and AA return so we can use the new first dining from AA at LAX.
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Old Jan 16, 2018, 12:01 am
  #63  
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Originally Posted by navylad
Some thoughts

......
3. There are indeed better F products out there, but one should bear in mind that there is also a significant price difference.

.....
Indeed. BA F for me (CPT-LHR) is about three times the price of EK F.

No-brainer!
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Old Jan 16, 2018, 2:36 am
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Originally Posted by flying_pig


OT: navylad, I think that in over 10 years reading this forum this has to be one of the rudest posts Ive ever come across. Calling other posters stupid repeatedly is not exactly in the spirit of the discussion.

For the records, my most frequent destination is LAX and I opt for direct flights whenever I can: this mean I primarily fly BA going West. However, I have have often seen better prices on far better carriers; for someone who doesnt mind taking a stopover it would be a no brainier to fly LX or AF.
im sorry you found my post rude. The words you highlight were highlighting the comparison of F prices in a different route when the OP had request advice on a route to LAX; a comparison of apples and Pears. It was the point that I was saying ImHO is stupid not the poster, whose opinion is of course just as valid as anyone else on this forum.

And im sorry you disagree with me finding the term proper airline stupid, but that is my opinion and Im grateful if you would respect that.

Bacj on topic

Originally Posted by thijsseh
Indeed. BA F for me (CPT-LHR) is about three times the price of EK F.

No-brainer!
fantastic, is that a direct flight on EK? Or are they having to keep the cost down to compete for an indirect route?




Last edited by navylad; Jan 16, 2018 at 2:43 am
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Old Jan 16, 2018, 2:45 am
  #65  
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Originally Posted by navylad


im sorry you found my post rude. The words you highlight were highlighting the comparison of F prices in a different route when the OP had request advice on a route to LAX; a comparison of apples and Pears. It was the point that I was saying ImHO is stupid not the poster, whose opinion is of course just as valid as anyone else on this forum.

And im sorry you disagree with me finding the term proper airline stupid, but that is my opinion and Im grateful if you would respect that.


Your apology reminds me of Emma Dent Coad when she called Shaun Bailey a "token ghetto boy":

"If [Mr Bailey] is offended, I apologise"
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 1:15 am
  #66  
 
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BA First Class - would be comic if it wasn't embarassing

My wife and I recently flew BA First from London to Mexico City. Overall it was a thoroughly disappointing experience. Here's a breakdown:
The arrival experience at Heathrow is great - the first class check-in area is very pleasant and you have a dedicated route through security and straight into the lounge.

The Concorde Lounge is great, and would be wonderful if it weren't for the really loud people occupying it. This is less to do with acoustics and more to do with a widespread sense of entitlement. However, my wife and I had a pleasant breakfast before making our way to the gate, This is where the experience started to go downhill.

It was red nose day and many of the staff at the gate were wearing red nose headbands and being generally jolly.
My wife an I boarded together, and as we were in the muddle seats my wife was shown to her seat on the left of the plane. I was told to cross the galley and take the right aisle. This would have been fine except the galley was blocked by a steward rearranging the contents of a trolley. without looking up he pointed down the aisle and told me to head down the plane. I investigated this option, but there was nowhere in the next cabin to cross, so I came back and waited for him to finish. Again without looking up, and rather irritably, he told me that I would have to go that way or there would be no food service. I tried to explain but he wasn't interested. Finally, a stewardess from the first class cabin reappeared and took me through the left aisle up to the front galley and showed me to my seat.

The seat area is pleasant, in a rather masculine sort of way. The seat is comfortable and there are lots of cubby holes to stow things. The area feels spacious, but not as big as the Emirates First Class Suite.
One thing that was immediately obvious was that the seat was rather grubby. The area where the seat joined the partition was full of small crumbs - presumably left over from the previous occupant's breakfast. When the stewardess came through with a hot towel I used it to wipe down the armrests. The towel came out black, much to the stewardess's embarrassment. She didn't offer to do anything about it.

Then the real fun began. A lively discussion developed in the front galley, apparently about the availability or not of the Caesar Salad. The pitch rose from animated to angry, with much crashing of cabinets. An one point someone was asked to provide their staff number, a request that clearly wasn't going to be entertained.
A fellow passenger in the first class cabin started joking about this altercation. We weren't entirely sure that it wasn't a red-nose day prank to benefit Comic Relief.
If one of the service objectives of First Class is to offer a peaceful and stress-free travel experience, this was probably the worst way to kick this off.
Finally, the ground crew were off-loaded, the bickering subsided and we were ready to go.

Once we were in the air, it was time to settle back and relax. The first step in this is to recline the seat. Now as aircraft seats offer more options, the controls become necessarily more complex. The controls on my seat had passed from complex to impenetrable. This wasn't helped by the fact that the labels to the various buttons had been rubbed off, presumably by enthusiastic cleaning in the distant past. I tried a few buttons at random but couldn't make any sense of them. As a seasoned traveler and digitally aware traveler, I was surprised to hit a wall so early so I persevered - to no effect. Finally, I called the stewardess, expecting a humiliating lesson in obvious control. Happily for my personal pride, the stewardess was equally flummoxed. This was reassuring but not very helpful. But she knew a guy who could help. She disappeared briefly and came back with a steward from a different cabin. He had been on a course. He explained that the circular dial - which in any normal control would dial clockwise or anticlockwise, also slid to the left and right - in defiance of all normal UX patterns. Here's a tip to designers of future complex ccontrolsystems - can it be used after the control panel has been enthusiastically scoured with an abrasive pad?

Having finally reclined the seat I then turned my attention to the entertainment system. The TV screen was a good size and a decent quality. The selection of movies and tv shows was pretty good. What dragged the experience down was the really terrible remote that you have to use to navigate the system. The remote itself feels really of fashioned, with clunky controls and an annoying lag. Where it became really frustrating was trying to watch a tv boxed set. Clearly, the concept of box sets didn't occur to the team who designed the user interface, and it has been akwardly bolted on as an afterthought, and with no testing. The result is that you can watch the first episode of a series pretty easily, but watching subsequent episodes takes requires a sleuth-like attitude and a certain abount of luck. I finaly worked out that if you ignore the usual navigation and use the - very clunky - search feature, you can eventually find the further episodes of your selected series.

The food service on my flght was pretty good, with enough choice of food very generous serving of drinks. I tend not to eat too much on planes so I can't comment much further.

It was then time to get some sleep, and this was where the experience went from comically incompetent to frankly awful. One of the promises of the first class experience is that you can travel in a bubble of peace and relaxation, and get a good night's sleep at 30,000 feet. This was not the case here.
The beds themselves are comfy enough, and the cabin temperature wasn't oppressively hot - so all seemed well. What killed any chance of sleep was the noise from the galley. Throughout the while flight there seemed to be building work going on up front, with endless crashing and banging, loud discussions amongst the crew, and on two occasions what sounded like trays of crockery being dropped from a great height. (The second time this happened I actually went to investigate. What had actually happened was that a loaded tray of crockery had in fact been dropped from a great height.)
In exasperation, I called the stweardess and asked her to keep the noise down. She apologised, but explained that the layout of the galley and the mechanics of the stowage spaces meant that silence was not an option.

So, in summary, the experience wasn't great. It wasn't even good. At best I would call it mediocre.
I should point out that I am a frequent Emirates flyer, and my benchmark is Emirates First Class which, if not perfect, sets the benchmark pretty high. On this scale, BA First Class is about equivalent to Emirates Business Class on a poor day. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has ever flown Emirates Business Class or above.
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 3:08 am
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Throughout the while flight there seemed to be building work going on up front, with endless crashing and banging, loud discussions amongst the crew, and on two occasions what sounded like trays of crockery being dropped from a great height. (The second time this happened I actually went to investigate. What had actually happened was that a loaded tray of crockery had in fact been dropped from a great height.)
This made me laugh.

Ill leave others to comment on the rest.
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 3:51 am
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Originally Posted by baldfatchris
So, in summary, the experience wasn't great. It wasn't even good. At best I would call it mediocre.
I should point out that I am a frequent Emirates flyer, and my benchmark is Emirates First Class which, if not perfect, sets the benchmark pretty high. On this scale, BA First Class is about equivalent to Emirates Business Class on a poor day. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has ever flown Emirates Business Class or above.
Totally agree. I have posted about this service before. Personally I think their hard product is good. What they need to improve on is the customer service. It is the small things that matter.

Like showing me to my seat. Or allowing the First passengers to exit the plane first and hold back the business people - rather than leaving me to try and slip into the exiting crowd awkwardly as though I am trying to queue jump.

Apparently it is due to lack of first class training so I have been told. If they sorted these small things out I would fly BA all the time. But since they don't I fly Emirates for the majority of the time.
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 4:02 am
  #69  
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Originally Posted by thatflyer
Or allowing the First passengers to exit the plane first and hold back the business people - rather than leaving me to try and slip into the exiting crowd awkwardly as though I am trying to queue jump.
I've got to say, I never had this issue on BA (assuming the "normal" doors were used on the B747 / B777). Club passengers were generally held back for F passengers. Not been on BA F for about 5 years though - so maybe it's changed.
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 4:06 am
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I have flown BA first class 10 or so times, on 777 and 747 and have never had a bad flight, one occasion was perhaps middling, but all the other times have been excellent, unless you become unbelievably picky (which I agree is a personal choice). The one middling occasion was more down to an extremely intolerant passenger in 1A who for some reason thought she owned the plane and was not happy that my wife dined in my buddy seat and talked quietly. I will say that generally I am a content person, which helps I have not flown first with other carriers, but have been used to being spoiled with top level international hospitality during my career so do have some idea of quality to base it on. Each to their own and all that...but for me flying first is considerably nicer than Club (on the current seats).

I would add that the boarding could sometimes be better, it should be a cast iron rule that fist passengers always board first, without the scrum that can sometimes be involved.
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Last edited by Richardc77; Apr 15, 2019 at 4:13 am
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 4:17 am
  #71  
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Originally Posted by baldfatchris
My wife and I recently flew BA First from London to Mexico City. Overall it was a thoroughly disappointing experience. Here's a breakdown:
The arrival experience at Heathrow is great - the first class check-in area is very pleasant and you have a dedicated route through security and straight into the lounge.
Many thanks for the detailed comments, and let me also welcome you to Flyertalk baldfatchris and the BA forum,. it's good to see you here, and thank you so much for taking the time to give this detailed account of your trip.

I think the main problems best stand as you reported them. The remote control is indeed a bit week, so I just normally touch the screen to navigate, it's a bit more intuitive. The dial issue - yes I see what you mean, as someone who gets to use First more than most it really hadn't occurred to me before. But it would be good for anyone new to First to be aware of it. I like it because it gives a good granularity to the seat position. There should have been a laminated blue card in the magazine rack explaining how to use it, and the lighting system which is also a bit complex if you are not used to it.

The noise - well presumably this was a 787-9 aircraft. with perhaps not so experienced Mixed Fleet crew on it, so you have the quadruple whammy of a low noise aircraft, a very cramped galley, a brand new service rgime, and crew trying to find dozens of items in many dozens of storage locations - which may well be different to the other aircraft the crew work on. No easy answer to that one! However over time there will be more longer term MF crew staying on, and familiarity will improve.
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 4:22 am
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I don't think it is acceptable that BA uses live customers to train their staff. Trained staff are what make the difference - and not training staff really just shows that the airline doesn't care.
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 4:23 am
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Im about to do my 30th First. Whilst there are occasional niggles they are just that, niggles, rather than Im never flying BA again sorts of issues.

Ive always felt looked after, never had a glass go dry, only once in memory not had my first choice of food, usually had a good nights sleep, been satisfied with the food and drink choices, and overall enjoy the space and privacy compared to CW. Ive flown Qantas in First too, and whilst there are some elements that were better (best sleep Ive ever had, that seat is excellent), and I liked the chauffeur service, the reality is that, for me at least, the routes I take if I want to earn TP / Avios then BA is usually the best choice for a direct flight from London.

Maybe Im not as fussy about the little stuff like being shown to seat (Ive never failed to find a seat in all my years of flying), and Im not afraid to use the call button if I want something, but I think on the whole the service I get on BA in First is good.
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 4:32 am
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Yep agree, I can find my own seat as well I also like being treated like I'm not up my own arse, but again maybe some want something different, and I guess as with anything in life, being all things to all people is not really doable, right most of the time for most people is no doubt what BA strive for even if that's not what they would admit to. Lastly I have always found the crew great, diverse in personality, some chattier than others, but again that suits me, I don't want robots and none have ever refused any of my sometimes cheeky requests
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Old Apr 15, 2019, 4:53 am
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Originally Posted by baldfatchris
I don't think it is acceptable that BA uses live customers to train their staff. Trained staff are what make the difference - and not training staff really just shows that the airline doesn't care.
Interesting to read your review, thanks for sharing. I think most IFE's were built only by IT people and therefore UX is forgotten about or just not considered, luckily that is changing and new IFE systems are somewhat more intuitive and less technical lets say.

As for training, sometimes even training doesn't cover what you face on the job in reality. Yes, it may provide reassurance, awareness and more know-how but ultimately when you're faced with the on-the-job tasks it can be a very different experience and a little more nervy when faced with actual people (passengers in this case), like anything in life really!
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