Kgmm77

orbitmic

But my point (I can't speak for anyone else and I know some people are unhappy with recent offerings but that was not my own argument) is not about the price of what we are drinking today. It is that if JR is correct - and again, I have no idea whether she is or not - what we are drinking today will not be offered tomorrow. In other words there is no way that the classic wines we are being currently seeing on F menus would have been bought for anywhere near €6/bottle cellar price at the time they were purchase. The exclusion level at the time will have necessarily been a lot higher. Even in the very unlikely case that they were bought en primeur (ie before they were even produced) some of them will have been about double that level.

The problem is of course compounded by the fact that prices for a number of "classic" styles has increased rather sharply in recent years (largely due to demand from a number of emerging markets such as China) so that even keeping exclusion thresholds constant would make it impossible to continue purchasing some currently enjoyed wines, let alone lowering that exclusion threshold. That's of course not airlines' fault but that is a reality that they are facing nonetheless.

simons1

I would be surprised if people have bookings that far forward that it is a material issue. And if the wine is such a significant factor in one's plans then of course one may switch to another carrier.

The Muffin Man

stevie

I thought it was a well balanced article.

I generally fly J using a number of airlines and found the wine quality has really decreased over the last 10 years especially.

BA has certainly done this, most annoyingly in the F lounge st LHR.

orbitmic

I don't think that's the way decisions are made to be honest. Most people don't say "I'll change airline because of the wine" or "I'll change airline because they serve breakfast as a second meal at 5pm" or even "I'll change airline because I don't like the seat" or "I don't like the timings" etc. That is not to say, however, that those things do not matter. Quality is typically a holistic and impressionistic evaluation that people will make based on a whole range of factors and it is always difficult to know what's the hair that will break a given camel's back.

It goes in the other direction by the way. BA are launching an effort to improve F food quality (some would say restore it to closer to its previous levels as it has taken a bit of a hit in my view since the discontinuation of the tasting menu on the A380 and bistro menu elsewhere). People won't say: "oh, I'll fly BA now because the food is better" but it is that same hope that it will add to the "holistic evaluation". It's all about what you are trying to be good at, what you are willing to risk, and what custom you are trying to gain or rely on.

As it happens, of all of its long haul travel classes, F is probably the worst performing one. Thus, one could almost ask the question the opposite way. If F is underperforming whilst CW and WT+ are very lucrative, and if BA feel that they are making so little money from F that they are down to an exclusion threshold of €6 on new wine purchases, would they not be better of just giving up on F and refocusing on Y-W-J? After all they are moving to smaller planes, cheaper and less thoroughly trained crews, and the F market is increasingly small and demanding. At the end of the day, a travel class is a big investment and one has to decide whether it is worth it or not and whether they are willing to put what it takes to make it a success or not, and if it is merely breaking even or so, it is not. Note that this is not something I wish, I do use BA F myself though only ever at a discount, so quite frankly and quite bluntly, I don't think BA is in the business of pleasing customers like me.

Globaliser

However, in the same way that you can't look at wine or food as individual straws that might or might no break the camel's back, you also have to look at the airline's offering in a holistic way. Viewed in isolation, F may be the cabin that struggles most to make a profit, but that doesn't mean that BA can just do away with it without risk. It has some value in the overall product line-up even if it doesn't make a profit in itself. For example, BA could risk reducing the appeal of CW by removing F altogether, and that would be a spectacular own goal.

BA's comments suggest that the way forward is that F will progressively be offered on fewer routes and in smaller cabins. The overall number of F seats will shrink, perhaps quite significantly. (We've seen in other threads the comparisons of overall F seat counts across the fleets of different comparable airlines.) That may be the trigger for improving F yields, and then having the margin for improving/restoring the service levels. We will see.

If my tea-leaf reading is borne out to any significant extent by future developments, I would sound this caution again: "improving F yields" is likely to come in part by reducing the number of conventional award seats in the cabin. In other words, those like me who currently usually enjoy F via Avios cannot necessarily expect to have similar ready access to the improved F product in future. I expect there to be complaints about the sheer impossibility of finding award seats in F; and that (other than straight cash fares) F is being saved for those with Jokers and GUFs (and the BOS/DXB experiment has the potential to shut off even this route into F).

orbitmic

I completely agree. Both about the fact that even if it is not really profitable as an individual cabin it can have a value (and/or conversely that cutting it may have a cost, including in terms of brand perception), and about the fact that if F is going to be limited to fewer seats on fewer routes, the whole point will likely be to close the door to avios/2-4-1/guf/deep discount pax etc. In many ways, he AF model has been a very radical version of that: very limited routes, very limited discounted opportunities and almost no award access, but exceptional service. The LH model has been more "in between": less limited in terms of routes and access, more discounted opportunities than AF but much fewer than BA, much less exceptional service than AF but much more luxurious than BA. Incidentally, both airlines also faced the question of whether to just end F at the time when it was a lot less good and struggling to find its niche and they decided to make it more exclusive. The quality difference is very noticeable (especially with AF), but I'm sure many an FB member are very envious of BAEC access to F and would call anyone asking for greater investment in the product nuts thinking of what it would mean in terms of access and costs.

Ultimately, when your family hotel decides to revamp all rooms to make them super luxurious and become attractive for the rich and famous, it is no secret that the second they can, they will hasten to upgrade their rates too.

simons1

I thought was the general direction they were going in. Smaller F cabins on fewer routes, and cutting out the cheap upgrades, reward flights etc.

BCH

If you aren't a Financial Times subscriber, you can read the article for free here:

amt

orbitmic

I do want some approachable funky discovery wines on the list, but ultimately, I guess it is all about how much you value diversity and a balance of styles. There are indeed a lot of very drinkable good value wines in both old (including France, Italy, etc) and new worlds, but to cut a long story short, there is no point in offering three whites, three reds, and three sparkling if they are all going to be the same style.

This goes back to a couple of comments by the Business Travellers awards' chair which I find paradoxically naïve and quite frankly a little arrogant. Let me explain.

First, he makes a big fuss about the fact that theirs is a blind tasting and thus they won't be impressed by famous names or big labels. Theirs is indeed a blind tasting, and blind tasting will indeed lead to different results than an open tasting. It does not follow, of course, that the blind tasting is inherently "better" or more "honest" let alone more effective at appreciating what customers will enjoy.

I suspect many people on this forum are already well aware of the story of the "new Coke" but for the benefits of the few who might not, here is a reminder. In the 1980s, Coke became aware of claims by their big rival Pepsi that in blind tastings, customers actually rated Pepsi quite a bit higher than Coke. First, they thought Pepsi were spreading what was not yet known as fake news so they organised their own counter-tastings but no, it was true, in blind tests, customers overwhelmingly rated Pepsi higher than Coke. So Coke execs, very worried about the future of their sales and primacy on the cola market organised one of the biggest taste studies in history to develop a new Coke that would have the edge over Pepsi again. They poured in millions, recruited hundreds, developed an incredible variety of options till they came up with some sort of ideal Coke, one which was indeed almost universally rated as very significantly better than the old Coke as well as very significantly better than Pepsi in blind tastings, and with great fanfare, they launched the New Coke. Coca Cola sold it alongside the old Coke for a few years to tragically disappointing commercial results until they decided to just cut their losses, discontinued it entirely to only keep the old Coke thereby renamed "Coke Classic". Moral of the story: it is not about what customers or experts think taste better, it is not about what analysts tell you people will or will not want to drink in certain ages and contexts, it is about what people are looking for whatever other symbols, prejudices, memories, and dreams they are bringing into the equation.

That's the thing. Food and drink are intellectual pleasures. Taste merges with smell, sight, memories, thoughts, however well or ill grounded to lead to a whole range of emotions that stretch from disgust and contempt all the way to excitement, anticipation and even ecstasy (the feeling, not the drug, or at least so I hope). Who gives a sh*t that x get more excited when they drink a wine which is more expensive while some cheaper ones can be perfectly good, that y have stuck it somewhere in their minds that their preferred Sauvignon Blanc are from New Zealand while some of us think a number of regions grow more interesting ones, or that z want to try a Brazilian wine because they think it sounds exotic or will not touch a Japanese one because they think it is not a "true" wine producing country or will jump on a bottle of anything South African because that reminds them of their honeymoon and brings a tear in their eye? Whose right is it to tell them that they are wrong and that another wine really "tastes" better or just as good? Even our brain genuinely/honestly reconstructs taste differently according to all those external thoughts narratives and prejudices, science knows it but apparently not yet Mr Business Traveller.

And then there is the second point: "nobody wants to drink a hard red on a plane!" says Mr Business Traveller. Sorry? What? That is such an absurd thing to say. It reminds me of equally narrow minded old rules when people thought nobody would want red wine with a fish or nobody would want a dry white with the cheese (by the way, try a dry white on goat cheese if you haven't yet, it has since become a classic pairing for a reason) or nobody would want to drink Champagne with dessert. Says who really? Different people enjoy different things. It is as absurd as saying "nobody will want venison on a plane" because it's too heavy or "nobody will want a burger and chips on a plane" because you can't make them as good as on the ground or "ditch the steaks, they are invariably horrid".

Now let's be clear, heavy foods do feel heavier in the air, even the best airplane burgers and chips are a lot worse than even your average half-decent burger joint in any given midsize town, your taste buds do work a lot worse at high altitude with less oxygen than on the ground, and it's never ideal to pre-grill a steak, store it, and reheat it or else people would do that at home instead of just grilling the delectable piece of dead cow. So what? Everything tastes worse on a plane quite frankly, even water does (yes, fans of blind tasting celebrate: that's a blind tasting result too: water tastes less good when you have less oxygen), it doesn't mean that we should go hungry and thirsty for 8, 12, or increasingly often 17 hours, nor that we should eat plain boiled pasta and dried bread just because anything normally nicer would be a waste.

The constraints of air travel are what they are and they will mean that vibrancy (sweet, salt, spice) will please more people in the air than on the ground compared to more subtle flavours which become harder to enjoy (but then palates vary infinitely, evolve too, and even their way to cope with lower oxygenation on taste changes over time as people travel more frequently). It doesn't follow that airlines should "only" serve curries (some people still enjoy grilled fish) or should "only" serve super sweet desserts (some people still enjoy plain yoghurt or a fruit plate), or, you guessed it, that airlines should "only" serve fruity, young, cheerful, and approachable wines, because yes, again, some people do enjoy a hard red in the air too regardless of what the Business Traveller panel chair may think.

So back to square 1. Shouldn't quality flying be about choice? Isn't it actually a good thing that those who want a burger or a curry can get it and that conversely, someone who prefers a grilled fish can get it too? And similarly with wine, shouldn't the number of wines offered 2+2+2+1 in J and 3+3+3+2 in F be used to continue offering a diversity of styles and experiences? Nobody is forcing anyone else to choose the Chateau Talbot or the Puligny Premier Cru, there will be plenty of people who will genuinely enjoy the Villa Maria or the Cloud Bay a lot more and great news, it is on the menu too. It is all about continuing to cater to customer bases which are not homogeneous and include incidentally many people who paying upwards of £5000 one way may be a bit miffed to be told they are being a bit snobbish and old fashioned about their wine tastes and could make an effort to move on with the times or with BA's new budgetary targets.

YClass

Price is just a vague proxy for quality so its entirely understandable. And as noted above it is easily measurable by clients. Almost everyone who flies F on ME3 (especially first time) tells friends OMG I drank Dom for the whole flight or whatever. It's an experience, it's a story, it's not something you do at home. With a "professional" wine buyer one hopes they can get the best bang for buck. People flying F probably spend £50-100 on shop wine for themselves (they should do research on this), so the budget should be up there to ensure its a similar experience (or frankly better).

I've noticed that BA typically have one red and one white which is in the £25-50 range as a "flagship" and then the rest are cheap New World typically £10-15 range in F. Much less than back in the day. I do think that the wine budget should be raised. For whites it'll make a vast difference. For red, it will need a more meaningful change but certainly two reds in the £50-100+ retail range probably make sense IMO.

I'm also surprised by poor whisky choice in F considering BA is a proud UK airline.....

Globaliser

krispy84