origin

THe problem with your analogy, when someone who has been doing the same thing possibly the top of their game. They can become complacent and careless. Like a driver who drives the same stretch of road every day, because immune to the risks faced. We all make mistakes and errors.

Stormbel

I cannot believe the nastiness of some people in this forum.
Freedom of speech here is so often used as a reason to write things that aren't even constructive, from experience or remotely useful.
I know that people are entitled to 'spout' but, please, have a little respect.

LTN Phobia

I don't fly with ME3, but I have had various failures on SQ with very poor recovery.

I have tried it more than a few times (in fact I fly with SQ long haul more regularly than I do on BA now, as they cover routes BA don't). One of them was so bad that I refused to fly SQ for well over 10 years before I finally 'forgave' them and flew with them again.

NH, perhaps another carrier which might be rated much higher than BA for supposedly being 'service-focused' etc. also annoyed me with gross service failures and lack of recovery (not just poor, it lacked it completely, i.e. complete absence of apologies) as well as more general poor service that they are now on my 'fly with them as a last resort only, or only if they are dirt cheap' list.

SKRan

goback

Scapegoating is an unfortunate part of human history that often is at the heart of retribution and blame.

LTN Phobia

NH refused to apologise for wasting 45 minutes of my time by keeping me standing around while their check-in system was not real-time enough to recognise my Start Gold status and was generally pretty rude about the whole thing.

NH refused to rebook on other flights with available seats when their aircraft went tech and caused an overnight delay, followed by increasing the delay further by again refusing to rebook on other available service, and generally handling was extremely poor. Subsequent follow-up did not even result in an apology (which was all I wanted, plus the promise to improve their procedures in the future).

NH had extremely poor on-board service by all members of cabin crew except one, persistently forgetting drinks and getting the meals wrong, on two consecutive flights.

After all that, I no longer fly with NH unless as a last resort. Particularly annoying was the refusal to rebook as I was not exactly on a cheap ticket, and failed to apologise for the inconvenience caused by their aircraft going tech (not even on board, which I have had from all other airlines).

Before anyone says "Language issue, maybe?" I can categorically say that it was not.

SQ promised refunds within 6 weeks, which took 6 months despite chasing, and accused me of lying about being promised a refund in 6 weeks (this has resulted in my refusing to fly with them for years because I found it irritating).

SQ delayed my bags for 9 days and nothing whatsoever was being done, until I finally got a sympathetic hearing from someone London-based, who took it upon herself to deal with it.

SQ's extremely poor baggage damage policy...

They are just main ones and I had a lot more minor issues but I try not to dwell on them.
Except for one instance many years ago, all failures happened when flying in cash F/J in the last 3 years.

You can see that recovery did not happen (except that they did deliver my delayed bags eventually).

In other words, all airlines fail from time to time, IMO.

I have not come across an airline that hasn't done something rather disappointing. Just among what I personally experienced, LH had a complete catering failure in J (no catering at all), A3 had a complete failure in EC261 compliance (still ongoing), BA had a catering failure, baggage damage, baggage delay, etc., JL had a catering failure and catering prioritisation failure, CX had a seat failure and aircraft swap-related downgrade, LX had a major seat failure (with extremely poor recovery to the point I no longer fly on their J seats long haul because of how the seat turns out to be when it's in full failure, and there were multiple inop seats on the flight, which suggests a pretty high failure rate), etc. etc. If I add in what my family members experienced, it becomes rather amusing.

I have not really come across any airline that I can safely consider the shining example of stellar service overall, but I do consider air travel to be somewhat commoditised, and I am generally OK with on-board service as long as everything that should work works (power point, seat mechanism, lights etc.) and not excessively hang up on catering or service.

HMPS

No, I am seriously asking you not to discount the value of experience. Heart transplant is an extreme but face it, we are talking experience...could be the kid at the cash register ( seen adults too ) who cannot make change without a calculator ! The same apply here, the FA in F was / may not have many years of experience at serving, manners, reading people, memorizing preferences etc. Thus taking away the joys of traveling in F.
The notion of drinking water out of a glass is "more civilized" is what you believe and is your right, to me it matters not...actually drinking straight out of a sealed bottle may prove more hygienic! Besides the bottle can rest with me, negating the need to call the FA again water ( I do drink a lot of water) and set up another fail point....If that is what irked you about QR fine. I ,like the most look at the overall service experience. The "coldness" of contact is to a large degree subjective. What I found thoroughly COLD bordering on purposeful neglect over four F long hauls (paid) convinced me that BA is not for me. If you notice there are more and more negative experiences recounted here.
So again, it boils down to Selection, Training, Supervision & Experience ....practically in all fields of life. Discount any of these cornerstones and pay the price!

MFMainCrew

Charming. You've clearly never been crew or worked an extremely busy flight like a MIA. I can assure you (as someone who has both an undergraduate and postgraduate degree) that it is not as easy as one might expect. It isn't good, it should never have happened, but there is no doubt that this would be an genuine mistake. I suspect it was down to something as simple as the galley lead misreading the crew member's writing, similarly they may just have come off three, 12 hour days of short haul and have been so tired they could barely see straight. When you're trying to run a busy galley and keep everything prepped and tidy, mistakes unfortunately can happen. It doesn't make it right and it doesn't sound like it was handled brilliantly by the CSM. I would also point out that occasionally the PIL (or manifest as you refer to it) is actually printed incorrectly..

rickg523

It isn't the crew, it's the company you work for. It's a known and notorious issue that BA doesn't provision properly for their premium cabins. Because of this long-standing policy - and let's call it what it is, cheap - there is essentially no recovery available if anything goes wrong. A bean-counter somewhere got a promotion and bonus for developing the "just-barely-enough" algorithm, and the crew (and BA passengers) get to live with the results when any little thing goes awry.

itsmeitisss

Dismissing my comments as subjective yet suggesting yours are not is disingenuous.

The comparison between service on a plane and open heart surgery is not extreme, it is non-sensical.

Critical surgery has fall backs built into the system. The surgeon isn't on their own in the operating theatre. Are you suggesting that there should be 4 or 5 other people monitoring what the CC do in case they accidentally choose the incorrect seat row (which let's face it, is what happened here)? No that would be ridiculous, as is your parallel.

I have stated that BA should abandon the just sufficient portions not just in premium cabins but in all cabins.

Flexible preferences

We have to put the bad somewhere, preferably away from ourselves! I agree, this may have been what happened here with the crew's admonishment of 3K.

DeathSlam

Should we perhaps end it here?

HMPS

You need to be awake during your major surgeries ! four or five people do not monitor what the surgeon is doing but are rather monitoring specific functions like breathing (heart lung machine) , blood pressure, anesthesia etc and give feed back or answer the surgeon's queries re what is happening. (watch reruns of MASH, sometimes you see hear that...!) If you are unaware of this I will still not call your argument / position "nonsensical" ! Not my style.
None of were /are privy to the state of the mind of the FA who made a mistake, neither can we question him/her. So while agreeing she made a mistake I will still submit that experience does help to minimize mistakes which is all I have advocated here. And yes perfection is hard to achieve but those heart surgeons do it as does a plumber or you or I. And yes we all make a mistake every now & then. I just don't want the heart or brain surgeon to make one on anyone ! BTW they lose their licence if they do.

LTN Phobia

Time to take a rest and think:

"Are we being helpful to the OP?"
If not, consider:
"Is it interesting for bystanders to read?"
or
"Is my post harmless?"

If the answer to none of the questions above is "maybe not", or "no", maybe think:

"Are my posts becoming repetitive or tedious?"
"Have I hogged the thread?"
"Have I derailed the thread with spurious arguments?"
etc.

If the answer to any of the 3 questions is "yes", time to step back from the thread, and take a breather and either let the thread quietly slip away, agree to disagree, or let other people take more active role in the thread...

Then, also think:
"Have I been disruptive to the thread or the forum?"
"Have I been nasty towards a group of people, another poster or generally horrid?"

If you have an honest review of your forum conduct and answered "yes" to either of the two questions, thank you, that's the first step towards recognising the negative influence you are having on the forum, and that's the first step towards changing your forum conduct...

LTN Phobia
Moderator: BA forum