WingsAroundtheWorld

Just back from a few US East and West Coast flights in Club.
It really is a very poor experience when compared to the marketing / what they used to offer / every other J airline.

The lowlights include:
- Wifi not working
- Very poor main meal options, all served on one tray, with overcooked beef and a yorkshire pudding wrapped in plastic
- Crew complaining about lack of staff
- Old Clud World seats - nearly 16 years old in design now? (from 2006)
- Bizarre sausage roll with crisps as a second meal (even the pies and salad on American are better)
- Club Kitchen that was bare with the exception of the £3 a bottle plonk and some sorry looking biscuits
- The crew making a tragic attempt to enforce an exit process by row number, like primary school teachers, when everyone has lost interest and it makes no sense given everyone is then in terminal together....

Please sort it out and put some investment back into CW to fix this... I get that BA is worse than Asian airlines, and now European ones, but to be worse than American / United is quite a fall from grace...

babyg_wc

Sadly this is standard BA (although they have obviously upgraded the old CW seats).
They will only get the message if people vote with their wallets (ive started flying TAP over BA from Portugal now), but its tricky to do given the monopoly they have in London.
But once you break the BA chains and you experience other airlines you will see that loyalty to BA brings little reward. Im not saying its all bad with BA, but there are better options.
And now you can spent your Avios on Qatar i can honestly see people leaving in droves, i cancelled my BA 2-4-1 LHR-SYD (which hard to get, and mega taxes) and am now flying Qatar (with the long leg in first) for LESS money/taxes (there were 3 of us wanted to fly), and incredible services/lounges to look forward to

13901

Oh no, not the "monopoly" myth again. Please.

DYKWIA

From Head for Points earlier this week (https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/0...landing-slots/). BA didn't buy these slots - but any other carrier wanting to get into LHR would have to buy slots :-

The _Banking_Scot

Hi

To be fair to BA,

Club suites are being rolled out and this takes time so later this year all lhr 777s will have club suites ( although some prefer the current club world seat

The food service is due to improve later this year ( I think another factor may be a shortage of staff)

the quality of my main meal has been pretty good but overall the one tray at once is poor. Also the second meal is generally poor.
WiFi not working is unlucky and could happen at any time.

Lack of wine top ups during the meal is a little disaapointing but I find if everything is on one tray it is OK ( with multiple courses served one at a time then top ups are more beneficial.


Preordering of main meals should br brought back.
Club kitchen is poor at the moment



crew have been good ime.


cw service could be improved but
With connections from edi and the edi and heathrow lounges BA generally works for me as well as reasonable European destinations ( with other airlines I might have multiple low level ffps)

I have Required for ba gold for next year so may try another airline in the summer the problem with Emirates and Qatar are the sometimes poor connections in the middle East with overnight layovers.
Regards

Tbs

13901

How can it be that with 51.16% of something one can be said to have a "monopoly"? Monopoly as in the classic definition of there being a single seller in the market?

Everyone's entitled to their opinion on service, cleanliness, standards and so on... but the monopoly myth is the one bit that irks me, because it's just factually wrong. I'd even challenge the idea of a dominant position, especially compared with other airlines in their hubs, see this slide from IAG but based on OAG data:



Capital Markets Day (iairgroup.com)

LBA_flyer

We Flew Jetblue yesterday (LGW>JFK) and were quite impressed with their offering and would definately use them again, my only concern with them from either LHR or LGW is if the plane goes tech etc, then one flight a day can cause problems. that aside we had a great crew, I liked the seat and the A321LR is a nice way to cross the atlantic. I have plenty of avios to use so I wil be back on BA at some point.

babyg_wc

I was thinking the board game, what were you thinking? But yes technically not a monopoly but also not a level playing field..

Cap'n Benj

Indeed. Monopoly no, huge competitive advantage without a doubt.

I have a CW redemption booked LHR-BOS, if VS had a similarly scheduled early flight as opposed to 4pm or whatever their earliest is, I’d be swapping over quick smart (Club suite vs old upper class or not)

choosethedrew

That's what I was going to say. I'd rather have a smaller slice of a massive pie than a massive slice of a tiny pie.

Never Stansted

It was interesting comparing some recent LH trip reports to the standard on BA. Incredible difference in the F&B offering.

That said it looks like there's been a genuine improvement in CE which hopefully will filter through to CW before too long.

Confus

I don’t. Believe it or not, most people prefer direct flights. I don’t want a 2am stop in the desert, and will readily accept a lower quality product to achieve it. Sure, some leisure pax will, and that’s clearly what QR want, but it won’t be the majority, not at all.

ajamieson

I had all of the above the other day, plus broken IFE at my seat; was given a choice of one of us moving to a middle seat in the rear CW cabin that did have working IFE or sucking it up.

Confess that I did quite like the sausage roll thingy, but yeah ... weird.

ermis177

Totally agree with the direct flights but it’s not a 2am Stop in a dessert. It’s usually an impeccable J experience with dine on demand, a very good seat if not excellent ( Qsuites) and very good service compare to sausages as light meals or old CW seats.

DYKWIA

Indeed - eastbound it's normally around 20:00 UK time. Followed by a 22:00 onward overnight flight. Perfect for sleeping (unless you're a weirdo that goes to sleep for the full 14 hours on an eastbound flight).

But... you don't get sausage roll and crisps.