14 rows of Club Europe on the Heathrow to Manchester earlier this morning and the crew did their absolute best to serve everyone a breakfast tray and drinks during the 33 minute flight. Passengers in rows 10-14 were being handed trays just before the 10 minutes to landing call. Whoever designed this product for such a short flight needs to rethink it. It is a mess from a passenger point of view and the crew clearly struggled to serve let alone clear away.

The crew were professional and brilliant and came around to apologise to everyone who didn’t get offered a drink. I declined the tray but why not just offer a good quality coffee and tea and pastry at that time of day, especially as most people grab something in the lounge.

Well done to the crew. The product sucked but you did your best and kept smiling. Thanks!

I doubt I could do their job, but historically hot breakfasts have been offered even on the MAN flights to ALL customers. Equally, they still do this for CE on Jersey flights. MAN is already a reduced club service. There should have been extra crew with that size of a cabin. It isn’t always going to be possible to complete the service but perhaps this is where having a few experienced crew can help as I suspect there’s a knack to it!

They used to serve a hot breakfast to everyone when the route was plied by 757s with 189 seats...

Agreed but wasn’t that one domestic service and configuration with enough crew to start from the front, middle and back? This morning on the A321 we had 3 serving in Club and the rest offering Buy on Board from back to front. The crew offering BoB from the first row of economy had to go back to the front galley after they finished which meant 2 Club trolleys had reverse back to let them past.
A lady in front of me said to her companion that she would be writing a strongly worded complaint to BA about not getting a drink in Club.

Anyway, first world problems, but a poorly designed product with staff doing their best to work with it.

Prior to the introduction of Club Europe on domestic flights, all of the assigned crew were dedicated to serving all customers, and additional crew were always rostered on domestic flights to help deliver the hot breakfast etc.

With the introduction of two separate cabins, some of the crew will be tied with buy on board and not available to assist in CE - so in some ways, things have got harder for the crew.

In addition to this, with the introduction of NEO and CEO configured aircraft with their tiny galleys, some of the trolleys for the buy on board service have to be loaded and set up at the front, impacting the timeliness of the CE service even more.

so on short flights, FAs struggle to deliver a proper CE experience due other FAs being in Y trying to sell BoB where the sales are minimal. On longer routes, it is the other way round: FAs struggle to serve the whole Y cabin due to the amount of time it takes to process Transactions and to the limited available galley space that doesn’t allow big stocks of M&S food. Whomever conceived this concept needs to be sacked and all his bonuses taken away. I am sure LH and AF/KL have looked into BoB and based on BA’s experience they might have decided not to go ahead. BoB and Business class may work if you have a tiny C cabin but for legacies such as BA, LH or AF, it is really a logistical nightmare.

Yes, with larger CE cabins this is frequently an issue. You only have to read some of the reports on TripAdvisor to see what can happen when things don’t go to plan, especially on the longer holiday routes to the Greek islands with very large CE cabins.

A friend of mine just came back from Chania: there wasn’t a single sandwich left after the first few rows in ET. He complained to CCs and they told him to complain to BA as it is a regular occurrence on longer routes.

Interesting I had a very good experience on a 12 row club cabin on MAN-LHR last week, I think there were 3 crew plus the CSM who did his welcome speech on the ground. All crew were up as soon as the gear was up.

All rows served in plenty of time, with enough time for drinks refills. So it just shows it’s down to the individual crew. That was one time I didn’t begrudge the CSM thanking his crew for their hard work on the short flight (they all worked very hard!).

Is CJ operated LCY-MAN and DUB-MAN in CE any better?

Completely agree. I hope though crew are given tools to do their job. It must be difficult to handle complaints when things are out of your hands.