bealine

To be perfectly honest, I think it was when the Flat Bed in Club World and the WT+ cabin was launched that our difficulties with First began!

As staff, we asked Bob Ayling if the Club Flat Bed would not stop our corporate clients purchasing First tickets - "Not a bit of it!" quoth he "Differnt market, old boy! Different market!"

Yet that is exactly what we have experienced. Take a full 14 seat F cabin on any typical sector - in all probability 2 seats will be taken by pax paying the full "F" fare, 2 seats will be taken by senior airline managers or flying crew on free or heavily discounted tickets, 4 seats will be taken by fare-paying passengers on heavily discounted tickets, 4 seats will be "Op Ups" from Club World, 2 seats will be mileage awards (producing zero revenue for BA).

If this is compared to the situation pre-Bob's Tail Fins debacle (the arrogance of which told its customers we were making so much profit out of them that we could afford to squander it), when everything BA touched turned to gold, the First cabin may not have had such a high load-factor, but the majority of its passengers travelled on full "F" fares.

Coupled with this, the offering of ever-lower fares in the WT cabin leads to higher than ever load factors, but with diluted revenue. When revenue falls and the push for profit becomes ever greater, the pressure to achieve ever greater cost savings increases.

Gordon Bethune, former CEO of Continental Airlines stated in his book "From Worst to First" that one of his main formulae for success when turning CO's fortunes around was to achieve substantial savings without the customer being able to notice. "After all," he stated, "they have paid the same price for their ticket as they did last week - they will sure as hell notice if you don't offer them that second cup of coffee in flight that you always have done before!"

The cost-cutting in BA has gone so deep that customer service has suffered - both on the ground and in the air! It is very sad to see New Club World being enhanced yet again (new seats, new IFE, new catering) without any mention of improvements to First. For sure, times move on, I'm sure no-one on this board would expect a joint of meat to be carved alongside your table any more in First (BOAC used to do it!), but it should still be an exclusive cabin and our customers should be made to feel like royalty or celebrities for the duration of their trip!

There are not many carriers out there now that have a proper First Class. It is our opportunity to shine and show our customers the reason why BA is different! For many of our customers, it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience (just as Concorde was) to celebrate and, as a company, we should be wanting them to tell their family and friends just how wonderful it was - that's how more bookings are generated!

As far as the crew situation is concerned, we went through a very bad phase where we shut First cabins down due to crew shortages a couple of years ago. This was followed by a period where very few crew actually wanted to work in First so you ended up, frequently, with a relatively junior crew member up there. Bless 'Em, they tried hard, but without the polish that our crew develop with (....ahem) a few years service, there will be inevitable faux pas and we all have a few "Gor Blimey" tales from that period that we would rather forget!

To those customers who have remained loyal to BA, simply because it is BA, Thank You! I have to say, we are lucky to have a hell of a lot of supportive customers in all cabins who continue to fly again and again - despite all the strikes, the baggage mayhem and the latest security fiasco!

I just hope we have an announcement about First class improvements soon!

(Sorry to make this post so long, but the slow deterioration of First Class is one area I really feel passionate about and, if I could influence one thing within British Airways, this would be my target!)

dhstyle

As someone lucky enough to fly reasonable regularly in first I endorse most of the comments here. Even more so since the Summer where my girlfriend and i flew SQ to SYD in F. What a revalation!! I wil remain a loyal BA customer but SQ will have my business going forward to Asia and beyond.

Raffles

Why not?

This is, to some extent, the problem with F - a lack of imagination.

I was genuinely astounded by the food that LH served in F when I flew down to HK in May. If you're willing to spend the money on the product then anything is possible.

bealine

[QUOTE=Raffles]Why not?

This is, to some extent, the problem with F - a lack of imagination.

[QUOTE]

Do you know, I can't think of any reason why we couldn't do a full, British roast dinner on board carved at the table as in BOAC days!

Perhaps, if any of our product guys are looking in, this is one area we could and should excel in! No one else in the world has full, bloated roast dinners like the British! Perhaps our overseas friends, when they travel First Class, would care to sample the finest traditional British fare such as Aberdeen Angus roast dinner complete with Yorkshire Pudding!

While we're at it, the meat and veg used in the catering for First and Club should without doubt be from the local free range organic farms of Berkshire, Surrey, Hampshire, Sussex and Kent. We have some of the finest agricultural land in the world producing livestock, fruit and veg of outstanding quality - there really is no excuse for buying rubbish!

edi-traveller

[/QUOTE=bealine]Perhaps our overseas friends, when they travel First Class, would care to sample the finest traditional British fare such as Aberdeen Angus roast dinner complete with Yorkshire Pudding!

[/QUOTE]I'm salivating.........

That sounds so good. You can't beat Roast Beef and Yorkshires!!!

aristoph

Not true! Please see the recent thread which quoted from the BA Annual Report the income from miles sold to partners at £350m (if my memory serves me right) versus an estimated cost to BA of £15m if all of those miles were redeemed for free flights. That is a profit margin of 2,300%! I think they should roll out the red carpet for Tesco mileage redeemers.

adrianjc32

Why do you say that? What makes you think there is no plans for a new first cabin?

SchmeckFlyer

I find this a dangerous strategy, and I would hope BA is not following it. Just from my own experience and viewing that of others, using the excuse "Just wait until this happens, and then everything will be okay" tends to result in drastic procrastination with negative consequenes far in excess of what they would have been had the problems been dealt with in a timely manner.

T5 will not make for a better seat in F. It will not magically sprout extra FAs where they are needed with the perfect skills required to deliver on the F promises. Nor will it do the same for security scanners. The food will not get better because aircraft park at T5 instead of T4. So no matter how glitzy and stunning T5 is, without the proper staffing, without the proper investment in the product now, T5 will simply make the airport experience slightly less painful, but do little to improve the overal experience.

SchmeckFlyer

A FA in F once told me that the reason they no longer do meat carving is because the aisles in the current cabin do not allow the carvers to pass through.

When my mum flew with KLM (many years ago when she was in uni), she remembers carvers in their first class. And they even finished preparing the roast (or whatever it was) on board (i.e. not just reheated). Imagine that on KLM...

oyster

Admittedly my experience is limited to half a dozen or so trips in BA F, but there is no doubt there has been a marked deterioration in the soft product since about 2003 and of course the hard product hasn't moved on at all.

I've always felt that the F product differentiation has been lessened by the fact that so many services are offered to both F&J passengers together; F&J priority boarding, F&J use of Molton Brown Spa, F&J use of Fast Track security, F&J use of Arrivals lounge and so on.

I actually can't help but feel that WW cares little for F. The fact that CW is having a 3rd refit in the time that First hasn't had any is very telling.

Land-of-Miles

Bealine

I have some professional insight into these changes as I worked at Waterside/Compass during this period and was involved to a certain extent in the Dusk deployment and to a larger extent in the re-engineering of onboard products to produce crew reductions. I also have a view as a revenue PAX.

I am not going to get into a "Bob was misunderstood" debate, although I personally think his core problem was the inability to convey his longer term insight into the issues the airline would face (which I think have been shown to be spot on), to his troops on the ground. To a certain extent the TUs acted as a fog to disperse the real message and bend it in directions it was never intended to go, but that is all history.

The real distinction between F and new J was always intended to be a service rather than seat distinction. Sure the F seat is quite a bit nicer than the upper deck J seat, but it is the service that is the real differentiator. At the time of the Dusk seat launch there was a very clearly differentiated service in F. PAX to Crew ratios were high (especially with CSD engagement), menu choices varied and of high quality, the wine list was interesting. The whole F product offering came together at a different level of quality to J.

The original rationale for re-engineering the soft product offering and its delivery was sound. The soft product had evolved over time rather than being structured to deliver value to the customer for instance I remember 3 different disposable salt and pepper variants for F, J and Y. These paper packs were identical apart from the branding (F, J and Y respectively). This added zero value to the customer and created unnecessary inventory and distribution complexity.

The goal of the product re-engineering teams was to focus on delivering what was important to the PAX in the most cost effective way for BA. Previous product development rationale ran something like:-

• We have X crew onboard this aircraft and they are only utilised Y% of the time, why don’t we get them to do activity Z as well?

Thus the product grew like “crazy paving” in a garden, with no clear edges or a cohesive overall feel. The soft product re-engineering was meant to:-

• Find out what the customer truly valued
• Deliver those aspects of service the customer truly valued in the cleanest and simplest way to BA

This latter point was not merely about cost cutting, by simplifying and modernising service process design it is truly possible to deliver higher value to the customer at a lower cost to the supplier (in this case BA). This is the essence I think of your quote from Gordon Bethune.

The big issue it seems is that this original ethos got derailed in the ever present search for greater returns. Product re-engineering increasingly focussed upon costs rather than service quality. This has meant a levelling down of the service offering. In the past the service for F was differentiated from the service in J by quality. This has remained the case but as the quality of service in J has fallen (and I would ask you to consider the J service - not the seat etc. - now to say the service in the late 90’s) the differences in F do not need to be so great to differentiate it from J. I think that the quality of J service (not seat) is now at or below the level of say BR Y+ 6 years ago. The F service to me feels at or below the level of BA J in 1997 (when I took my first few BA J flights).

In absolute terms however the “gap” between J and F has closed (and this comes from BA’s service choices not the introduction of the Dusk seat). As a result fewer PAX will be willing to pay for BA F over J. I personally will pay a small premium for F over J, but not that much, because I do not genuinely feel that the BA F experience is that special and not that far away from upper deck J.

Skimo

Ahem, the roast joint was not that long ago! I remember it well and am only in my thirties. In fact as Schmeck said, and if I remember rightly, it was discontinued when the flat beds were put in. Trolley service had to be dropped because of the new cabin lay out. Anyway, if memory serves me right the joint wasn't that great anyway, Went cold and or dry/overcooked quite quickly. Dogs loved it though

jchand

In this day and age , could you have a Knife big enough to cut a joint of Beef on board ??

G-BOAC

"Ah, I see you've played Knifey-Spoony before.."

jchand

No .... What is that ??