itsmeitisss

It's very common for the BA flights at FRA to be to and from a bus gate, and CE only buses only operate on arrival at LHR. It's quite rare to get a jetty boarding at FRA - the 1115 departure did yesterday but on the BA 907 at 11.55 it was the usual bus boarding. On arrival into FRA on Saturday we had to be held on the plane due to a thunderstorm close to the airport. I have found the catering on CE to be an improvement, but I do miss the scones and Rodda's clotted cream. I don't miss the finger sandwiches, but please bring back the scones and clotted cream...

Flexible preferences

Oh thanks I didn't realise that. Notwithstanding having more space and a flat bed seat for a 3 hour CE flight has been overlooked I think as part of a balanced commentary.

South London Bon Viveur

CE can be decent value and personally I'm not that fussed aout adherence to SOP's if the overall quality of service is good. My beef with BA these days is the overall deterioration (whilst accepting the need to remain competitive) and sheer level of inconsistency.

For example: there are too many mediocre crew- never awful in my experience, but far fewer outstanding experiences than a few years ago; customer/cut and paste services has become a joke, whereas it used to be a strong point; and then there are things like the OP described. Is my life going to end if I do not have a separate bus to the plane? No. It's a minor thing. But it's these small things that we need to hold on to as CE passengers, otherwise there really is no difference at all between CE and ET. How hard is it to consistently ensure CE and premium pax have a separate bus? You might tell me it's very hard- but my gut feel is that it should be do-able. Short and medium band catering is poor. Again, a relatively small improvement in that department would make me disproportionately happy. In this long list of first world problems, it's those little and subtle things that do make a difference and more often than not BA seems to fall short of late. There are times when I really enjoy CE and I actually think that with a bit of consistency, improved catering and the right price, it's a good product.

LCY8737

crazyanglaisy

I counted 71 people in CE on my 767 flight to Nice last Friday. So, clearly BA are doing something right. Not sure what it is, but something.

itsmeitisss

This was a case where you don't have to guess which doors to loiter by as only doors on one side of the bus. Long bendy bus...

awestphal

In FRA, TXL and MUC: exit at the right side only of the bus. Both at terminal and aircraft.

fly747first

There was no IFE; the crew apologized but they were not permitted to turn on the IFE on the LHR-MAD flight operated by 772.

So I sorta experienced this myself, except that I have to give the BA gate agents full credit for trying even when I asked them numerous times. Initially, most of the FIRST seats appeared blocked and then about 60 min before the flights some seats became open... a lovely lounge agent tried to grab one of the seats for me but the system kept telling her that the seats couldn't be assigned. At the gate, I asked the staff if they could give me a window seat in row 1 and when they tried, the system kept giving them errors so they had to make a phone call to another department which told them that they wouldn't release any FIRST seats. A few minutes before boarding, ExpertFlyer showed that the entire row 4 was available and when I asked the agents, they showed me that their computers also displayed the same thing I was seeing but whenever they tried to change my seat assignment, the system kept giving them an authorization message (which indeed I could see so I knew they weren't lying at all).

Onboard, there were many broken seats in the Club World cabin (mine included) and I overheard the cabin crew stating that they couldn't understand why there were so many nonrevs in FIRST when they had so many paid passengers with problems in the Club World cabin and nothing they could do since the flight was fully booked.

I'm not sure I'm understanding your comments on knowing the market(s)... For example, on CS aircraft, Swiss blocks a seat in Business meaning that if you end up on the AC-side, you actually get two seats to yourself and LX's catering is vastly superior to BA (even on super short flight such as ZRH GVA for well under $225 USD, they serve a small tray of 3 appetizers up front). Moreover, I find LX's cabin crews to be far friendlier, efficient, and more willing to deliver service from the heart than BA's.

Also, on Austrian and even Lufthansa, there are always quality blankets available if you ask the crew. Austrian in particular seems to be a big fan of colorful blankets.

HIDDY

Indeed....laughing all the way to the bank. ^

Can I help you

fly747first

I apologize as I should have been more specific: I didn't mean that the crew didn't arrange the meal presentation nicely, for they could only work with the limited resources BA gave them to begin with.

The Club Europe meal tray that BA uses seems to be significantly smaller than those of competitors like Swiss. Further, BA uses a dark blue stripped paper mat that seems to attract dust easily whilst Swiss for example uses a large tray and elegant black paper mat. On the LHR-MAD leg, BA used a very large rectangular plate that took the entire length of the tray, which served little purpose considering the size of the three small salmon pieces provided. I love salmon, but if it is excessively fishy, then I know it isn't of good quality. Back to presentation, the size of the Club Europe tray is so small that when a cheese, dessert, and appetizer course are put on such trays, the cabin crew has no space for the wrapped napkin holding the utensils and they have to put them on the side, i.e., outside of the tray (which is kinda unsanitary in my opinion); this isn't the case on other airlines' trays.

With regards to the cheese, it didn't taste fresh (perhaps it was left out for too long) and the two crackers provided with it were quite odd tasting, even simple Carr crackers would have been preferable.

You both seem to miss a key point, sadly. BA is the champion of overbooking Economy, so I must LOL that you guys think BA is actually selling the Club seats at full-fare. My LHR-MAD flight was overbooked by 35 in Economy, which I can't really say was a bad strategy given that this was a 4-class aircraft where Plus wasn't sold but there were also many BA staff on the flight that ended up taking Club and FIRST seats.

My best friend used to live in Argentina, and often, BA overbooked Economy at massive levels that some pax were offered Club World reaccommodations on alternative BA flights several days later. Argentinians flying BA often joke that if they fly Aerolineas, they are putting up with a huge risk of an operational/mechanical delay, but BA isn't much better due to excessive overbookings that may get them to Europe days later.

rockflyertalk

fly747first

I appreciate your response, but any airline with common sense would know this isn't optimal. BA continues to complain that they don't make enough money, yet the airline seems to have a profound inability to think outside the box.

BA already charges most passengers for seat assignments even in long-haul Club World except for top tier pax, so they could make it a policy that FIRST seats are sold at a higher advance seat assignment fee when doing short flights such as LHR-MAD instead of blocking the entire FIRST cabin until the day of departure. BA already has an ancillary revenue team that sets the seat assignment prices, so it shouldn't be rocket science for these creatures to set higher pricing for FIRST seats on flights where Club is the highest cabin being sold.

But I do know, because up until the day before the flight, the Economy rates were quite low and the Club rates weren't that high, so this tells me they overbooked with many low fare pax. If it were the case that they had sold many of the higher fares, then they would have closed all buckets and only left "Y" but again, this wasn't the case.

However, in theory, it is entirely possible that someone booking full-fare Y at the last minute is paying significantly more than someone who got a low Business Class fare that had 50-60 day advance purchase requirement.

Can I help you

fly747first

I completely understand, though I would argue that when a flight is massively overbooked well over 24 hours prior to departure, BA by then should know that it would need more crew to operate such flight with the extra FIRST cabin that would need to be occupied; the ancillary revenue team can then allow the option for paid Club passengers to pay a fee for these seats. In fact, they can have the rate pre-loaded in the system and at 24-48 hours just allow the system to give the option to sell the FIRST seats rather than the cabin being used for repositioning or nonrev staff, which reflects poorly on BA and even leads the poor operating cabin crew to face complaints from passengers.