Luckily this was somewhat of a one-off for us. Our SCL-LHR F flights a month ago were nothing to complain about and shortly after that I gave not just one but two golden tickets flying SIN-SYD in CW. I’m just put off by the way BA’s customer service handled the issue.

I think it’s just one of those ‘there are all types of crew - most good, some great, some mediocre’ threads which in my view apply to most airlines.

My flight yesterday (day flight in J) was not dissimilar - not offered a toiletry bag, not offered a bottle of water, brought the wrong starter, forgot to hand out immigration form, etc and mid flight, a lady casually walked up from wt+ and sat herself in one of the many empty cw seats and crew did not even notice. As it happens, they were actually nice crew, some of them even really nice, just not very much on the ball, so I went to ask for the toiletry bag after the meal so I could brush my teeth, told them about the starter, and went to help myself to water in the galley. As for the lady when the second snack came, someone finally asked her if this was her seat and sent her back to wt+ after a few hours of enjoying the cw seat and bedding.

So no, op’s experience is not the new standard, just something that is within the broad range of crew quality one can expect.

On this forum, you’ll find many people who think BA crew are the best in the world. You find the exact same comment on LX crew on the LX forum, on AF crew in the AF forum, on KL crew on the KL forum, just as on all those fora you also find people complaining about the service they got on their BA, LX, AF or KL flight. The BA crew are just more British basically, and many BA pax for many reasons find that this works best for their personal preference/comfort zone (exact same goes for kl crew being more Dutch and many of their pax enjoying that, qf crew being more Australian to the delight of many of their pax, the AA crew more American etc. The world is quite a well conceived place sometimes! ;) ), but basically, the quality is neither better nor worse than average forkefacy airlines which expanded in the same period. For all of them, a vast majority of crew members are good, competent, and pleasant professionals who will try hard to give passengers an enjoyable journey within reason. A few are exceptionally good, with original, pro active initiatives that make a real difference to passengers, and a few are not very interested and/or not very efficient.

What is, however the standard is the customer service response. That side of the business is pretty abysmal and shows ‘individualisation’ through formula: repeat your complaint, empathises, say they are sorry and will pass on your comments to relevant people who won’t get and/or read them, say they look forward to welcoming you back on (next flight). I rarely get in touch with them nowadays as there is frankly zero point unless you are effectively wanting a few avios which might or might not come.

Sounds similar to our experience just this week to KL, my wife didn’t even get Breakfast. Whilst the crew seemed friendly enough, they just didn’t have a clue how to provide a first class service, it was very disappointing. In First, there should be no need to use a call bell in my opinion.