Raffles

How would you do that? Put in a different seat and change the entire catering? You certainly don't tell the crew to speak to him every 10 mins to see if he is OK as Ben likes his privacy.

That said, BA does - both under and over the counter - appear to pay off certain influencers so there may be a deal. You may have noticed a BA FT post which had to be marked as 'Advertorial' recently for example. I know one person - not me - who told me he is given BAEC status.

Worth noting that Ben does not sell advertising on his site (it is done centrally via Boarding Area) so he isn't being nice just because they are advertising with him. That said, BA does advertise with us and it doesn't impact how nice we are :-)

(For clarity, BA ad revenue on HFP represents under 0.5% of our annual turnover. The affiliate commission from BA Holidays adds another 3% but that is done at arms length.)

LTN Phobia

Isn't it more about who they have on the flight than how many (if any) they add to it?

One great crew member is worth more than a couple of the bad one!

corporate-wage-slave

Let me clarify that one before the wrong impression is set up. This is a reference to the new Concorde Bremont watch. I spotted this via a run-of -the-mill suggested link to the YouTube video that came with the promotion. Unusually, I noticed was being virtual-hosted on the BA microsite. After I saw the video I asked myself "is this news suitable for BA FT or is this really an advert?". As it seemed to cross the lines somewhat, I decided to put up a thread, but I also decided to prefix the thread title with "[Advertorial]", since I've never really come across this sort of thing before. I didn't check that with anyone else and there was no "had to be marked" about it. Now Bremont are most welcome to send me a Ł10,000 watch if they wish but to the best of my knowledge no-one associated with this forum has in anyway benefited from this exercise, and it was a bit of a judgement call on my side as to whether it was worthy of mention. It didn't get many hits, so perhaps not, hence when I saw more recently the magazine advertisement for it I decided not to update that thread.

Lolbert

May not be related but on BA116 from JFK last night each cabin seemed to have a "Service Delivery Manager". Never noticed this before.

Raffles

Noted, thanks C.

DYKWIA

You're saying that people on here are posting positive messages regarding BA, and they get BA status in return?

Bites tongue.....

KARFA

icegirl

My comment was purely from the angle of it being 'coincidental' that's all.

Who else do you know they pay off?

I wasn't criticising HFP or you for that matter

DYKWIA

I'm actually just writing a nice TR about my flight down to LHR... I await GGLfL (if that exists) in return!

Raffles

No, this person is not a BA FTer but is an influencer / media person. I didn't mean that line I wrote to be read like that, although I can see how it could be.

For total clarity, one travel organisation has given me top tier status with them but I didn't actually ask for it! They just looked up my account, changed my status and then told me afterwards. It has zero impact on my coverage of this organisation because I very rarely use them and when I do it is at a level where status benefits are moot.