choosethedrew

Agree to a certain extent, life is too short to wish it away hoping BA becomes some kind of culinary mecca.

However, BA is not always totally avoidable, and without complaining to them, how would they know that they are losing £ to the completion over the food specifically.

Moonstone1234

Interesting last comment. BA was not my first choice re flight to Cape Town and I was disappointed it had been changed but hey ho.

My next long haul trip though is not going to be with BA. They will never link this but Emirates were offering car to airport, choice of seating when booked etc. BA have the slots though and often they hang onto them for dear life keeping out the competition and then offering sub par service.

efincomputer

CIHY - asking for an objective view, but do you thinks this make it harder from a crew perspective to look after customers, or increase the risk or customers perceiving that service had been "poor" as a result of low visibility/contact frequency from the cabin crew?

Using a recent trip LHR-JFK-LHR in November, my perception (rightly or wrongly) was that the crew did a bare minimum service. No proactive checks for additional drinks etc. Other than meal service and taking orders, I had nobody ask me if I wanted anything for the duration of the flight, and not being a fan of the call bell, resorted to heading to the galley (I was in the smaller forward CW cabin, so hardly a great hardship) myself to ask for another drink at one point. Now, if this is a result of crew being under guidance to limit contact, then that actually makes sense, but BA need to make passengers aware that they will need to ask for something, rather than expecting a more proactive regular check. Conversely, on the return leg, I found the crew to be a lot more proactive, and even though this was an overnight flight, had crew check in with me a number of times (when I was awake and obviously watching IFE) to see if I wanted a drink or anything else. I figured maybe it was minimal crew on the outbound (we were in a 772), vs a quieter overnight flight on a 773 with more crew on the return, but you have me wondering now if it's just a case of them taking guidance about keeping contact frequency down.

Can I help you

Sorry I am no longer BA so cannot give you any objective reasons why this is other than a reduction in crew numbers, with regards to the two different levels is service you received it in my opinion was down to the calibre of crew and supervision.

Globaliser

Definitely complain to BA if you are disappointed.

But even then, many people don't understand how the complaints system is intended to work. It's primarily there to give BA a metric for how particular things are being received. If BA makes a change to a service item and the number of complaints about that item increases by x%, that gives BA some basis for assessing whether the money saved is worthwhile or whether it's going to cost more in lost fares.

What BA writes back to the customer is pretty secondary, but that's a point that is missed by those who complain about BA's response to their complaints. Of course you're usually going to get a boilerplate response back in the template language du jour. There is neither time, resource nor point in writing a new literary masterpiece from scratch every time someone says that the food was poor. Every person who decides not to bother to complain because they expect BA's response to be emotionally unsatisfying is, in a sense, helping to perpetuate the thing that they might have complained about.

In contrast to complaints to BA, the (sometimes overblown) public complaints here on FT aren't likely to achieve very much - especially if they are basically along "how dare they" lines.Interesting that you should mention Cape Town. BA didn't get to its present position on LON-CPT by blocking out the competition. There was competition, and the competition had established slots that they could use to compete with - but they couldn't hack the competition and withdrew (and two went bust).

So by all means book Emirates next time. It may work for you. Or you may find why some people still book BA for its advantages, despite the disadvantages that come with doing so.

choosethedrew

I'm under no illusion that complaining about food is not going to achieve anything other than add one tiny proportion to a metric. However, my single contribution may be the one that shunts food up to 'top' place on whatever dashboard these things feature on, and the likelihood of something eventually changing *might* be marginally increased.

TTmex

LHR to MEX on 13th February. While it looks a bit scruffy the food tasted good. Beef was melt in mouth soft and the veg well cooked. The dessert was tasty although id call the starter a canapé rather than a starter. It was that small.

Didnt have second meal as was still trying to sleep after 10 hours of listening to screaming kids.

TTmex

And the menu from 13th. LHR to MEX

BerksFlyer

This is the menu from JFK-LHR last night. I didn’t sample anything from it, preferring to focus on getting some sleep on the very short flight.

bafan

5 hours is not a short flight - 40 mins is a short flight.

That said, I agree that the starter and dessert are sufficiently underwhelming that I probably wouldn’t have bothered either…

victairinternational

Is there any way of second guessing the menu that will be served? I assume pre-orders are no longer available (on MMB only showed special meals).

I am flying on BA173 LHR-JFK on 11 Mar. If it is the Pork main, I will order a Kosher meal but equally don't want to miss out on the Roast Beef! Total 1st World problems!

BerksFlyer

others may know better, but my understanding is that menus in the LHR-JFK route change monthly. Hopefully someone will be kind and post a photo of a menu at the start of March so that you can make a decision then.

Moleish

Any recent experiences or suggestions as to what the current LHR-LAX CW offering is like (and the return)?

SavvyTravel

The menu LHR DFW BA193 today looks familiar to followers of the thread.

Beef it is..

BerksFlyer

At least you don’t have to suffer the sausage roll as your second ‘meal’!