Globaliser

I think that we all agree that it should not be like this! The problem is basically that seats have been sold, and then the damage appears. What is the airline going to do about it? Living with the (cosmetic) problem until there is an opportunity to get it fixed seems to me to be the only reasonable approach.

JayeJ

We were in F yesterday SJC to LHR and the same scuff was on my seat. I'm thinking it's a design statement.

flatlander

If the seat material really is insufficiently durable, it's going to be a right pain for BA to fix. Not only do they have to disassemble part of the seat to fix it, taking the aircraft out of service for a day, but simply replacing the material is going to fail the same way soon after. Replacing the seat covering with something else more durable would require replacing all the seat covering at the same time to avoid a piebald First cabin that looks bad (worse, likely, than just one seat being scuffed).

The materials for an aircraft cabin (even the humble Traveller seat) are carefully selected and extensively tested to be safe in impact and fire situations. This goes by the charmingly direct name of "delethalisation" (you can read a lot of detail in a military context at http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a218437.pdf ). Many of the materials in your typical house or even your car would be lethal in some aircraft accident scenarios. So not only have BA chosen fabric designs that they think will look nice but someone has worked hard to find fabrics with that appearance which will not kill the cabin occupants if the cabin catches fire.

So, you can't expect anyone, BA or not, to fix this sort of thing quickly.

simons1

I suppose if you don't travel regularly you may not understand the seat might have been sold months before...before the damage even occurred.

If so what would you have done, cancelled the flight the minute the damage became apparent? Or just put the seat out of service and bumped the passenger (ie you) to CW?

GodAtum

I would have not have taken the seat out of service, but at least offered some compensation. Emirates gave my miles + a bottle of Dom for something similar.

ThatT1Feeling

I was thinking about my expectations of F when I returned from the US earlier this week. I certainly used to have high expectations, but they have mellowed over time and I am wondering whether I just assume there will be an issue now as my starting point..

For my outbound, the 777 17F cabin was OK (G-ZZZA) but certainly showing its age, with lots of seat-side scuffing from cases which have clearly been dragged past over the years. I don't know if it's possible to get rid of those kinds of marks but they certainly made it look shabby. The USB power didn't work. The crew were OK but not stellar - but I arrived feeling OK.

For my return, my seat had the "Fault" red light on, which didn't seem to create issues with the seat movement, but the seat-side light wouldn't turn off at all which was a pain for a night flight. The reading lights wouldn't turn on - so I had to use my iPhone torch to read the newspaper. I didn't even get too concerned about all of this and just draped the amenity socks over the light to avoid the worst of the issues. First should be better than this - but I am now so accustomed to its flaws that I don't even say anything any more. At least my seat reclined and the service from the crew was totally wonderful so I landed feeling good. The First Class flight connections experience from T5 to T3 was another matter entirely



Fixing the light which just won't turn off on a night flight