IB - Jekyll and Hyde
 

Just thought I'd share my latest Jekyll and Hyde experience on IB. Am posting it here as interested in the OW aspects of it all : a) whether the status recognition thing is just my luck or a norm, and b) whether others agree with me that the onboard realities are simply unnacceptable for a member of OW. (I have read many bad things on FT about IB but had no idea they now provide such a threadbare service on all their medium-haul flights).

First the good news -

Upgrades : Once again, as a QF Platinum, I was upgraded 2 out of the 4 legs of the itinerary. I say 'once again' as EACH AND EVERY TIME I have flown an itinerary on IB with a connection (as I have done on one occasion in each of the last 4 years) they have upgraded me on the shorter flight on both the outbound and the inbound. 100% record. These have always been on cheapest-available Y tickets, and on the first occasion I was not even Plat. but QF Gold (OW Sapphire) !

Is this an unpublished benefit of QF status when flying on IB ?!? ;) ^

And what was so amazing was that this time the flight in question on the return was on BA metal and yet I was still upped at the gate. (Have flown UK-Europe on BA down the back many many many times in the last few years and never once been Op-Upped, so must have been the IB factor at work).

Lounges - Stunning new facility in Madrid T4 (Velazquez one) - great, great lounge. Small but nice and smart facility at LHR too. Barcelona one not bad (bit old etc).

But then the bad news...

Onboard

Service

Very poor : OK on the J leg, though not good enough, and very poor on the two (5 hour) Y legs (final leg was on BA metal as stated above). A number of staff were downright rude infact, most very sombre/going through the motions.

Not so much as a 'hello' when boarding the plane on any of the flights (and IB don't check boarding cards on one-aisle aircraft I was told), and certainly no 'status hello' onboard (not that I expect one except on QF and CX).

Food

OK to poor. Very poor on the J leg (by shorthaul J standards) too. At least is free on the medium-haul Y, though you have to pay for it on the short-haul flights.

Entertainment - NONE !

This for me was the main issue, and to my mind is quite unacceptable - found myself on two 5 hour flights that, as standard IB policy, provide no entertainment options whatsoever. No films, no audio channels, nothing. Thank god I had my iPod.

Purser/CSD told me when I enquired that this was standard policy as of a few months ago for all IB medium-haul 2 cabin flights, even though the aircraft (battered old A320s) had all the available equipment. She confirmed that both pax and staff had complained, and that it was very frustrating for her as all it would involve would be sticking a video in the machine (that she showed me the aircraft indeed had !), dropping the screens and handing out headphones, but that IB management had decided to provide no onboard entertainment whatsoever on such flights.

My personal view is that it is unnacceptable in 2006 for an airline that is a member of one of the major networks, that claims to be a full service carrier - and espec. as it will be carrying pax on board on codeshares from other alliance carriers who provide such facilities - to operate 5-6-7 hour flights with no onboard entertainment service whatsoever. They have in this regard fallen behind even many LCCs/charter operators/etc.

It is even more unnaceptable when the aircraft have the facilities, but IB on high have decided not to use them for some unknown reason.

Not even pax. in J had entertainment options (no personal DVDs etc), which is even more shocking - how dare IB sell such seats for thousands of £/Euro when you get the same seat as in Y, no film or music, and an ever-so-slightly better meal. I would be livid if I/my firm had paid for big buck to be in that cabin expecting a real J service. (BA on equiv. flight/route offer NCW seats and an F cabin).

Very surprised OW / codeshare partners have not taken issue with any of this. Really does de-value the alliance.


So in summary it was a very odd set of experiences - great status recognition, stunning state-of-the-art lounge experience in Madrid, but sub-standard and out-of-date service and facilities onboard.

As I say, Jekyll and Hyde.... one side very much what an OW carrier should be doing, the other totally unnacceptable to my mind for an OW member. Guess OW gonna do nothing about it, but wondering whether IB's ever increasing moves to 'no-frills' service (i.e. to a 'no-service' service !) points to a near-future IB departure from OW a la Scare Lingus.

No idea, but as AA elite(s) I/we have been op-upped by IB so many times in the recent past, short and long haul, that I just don't know what to think, except be grateful, and totally blind/deaf at whatever other shortcomings they have, faults, by the way, that IMO and IME are neither so huge nor so frequent as reported here in FT.

:D Fair enough !

... though I wish I could agree on this point. Sadly though the OpUp to the poor J service on this particular flight simply could not mask the nastiness of the 5h flight after it. And even the OpUp to the excellent BA J could not make up for nasty 5h IB flight just before it.

In fact IB did not do themselves any favours by upping me on the BA leg... just reminded me of the vast difference between the 2 carriers !

Again fair enough, you have obviously taken many many more IB flights than me, and so I take your word for it. But my experience this week sadly only concurs with the negative opinions expressed by others on FT before.

I'll ceratinly never be flying IB on such a (medium-haul) route ever again, in Y or J.

Allow me to relate a little OT experience: quite a few years ago a large number of people I used to work with, from all over the world, got together for a special dinner. We went to a Spanish restaurant in Sydney (not my idea). They served us Gazpacho. Only *one* of us finished it, and I thought it was fantastic. :) Iberia can, at times, be like Gazpacho: fine to a few, nasty to many.

Uhmm... gazpacho in Sydney.
Garlic is the key to gazpacho anywhere in the world. :D

AA no better product wise
 

Ahem...on the point of in flight entertainment I can point you to another member of OW that fails miserably in this area and that lovely partner is AA. As for catering...well I guess they are probably on par with IB from what you describe (or do worse since nothing is free on domestic flights, some of which are 9 hours long :eek: ) and IMHO sounds like have inferior lounges. Service wise they probably do much better though.

Same on my 3 J flights last month. The common explanation is that it's "Spanish culture" to not give a "fake" smile or greeting. The crew couldn't have cared less that I was boarding the plane. In one case J was not allowed to board first. They also don't mind Y passengers coming into the J cabin slamming lockers, using the WC, and so on, all in plain view of the FA. The ground crew was worse, extremely rude. Once at check-in, the agent moved my 2 pre-selected business seats into 2 separate rows for no reason. I asked her to fix it and she did along with giving me a dirty look. Sorry to inconvenience you IBERIA!
I like airline food, and am always up for trying new foods. Regardless IB had the worst ever in either J or Y. Did not even touch one of my meals which the FA could not identify for me in Spanish or English.

I don't care about the lack of videos you mentioned, but IB shouldn't be calling this business class. It's so not. Aside from my minor complaints, the seat and legroom is identical to Y. To me there has to be at least some small differentiation there to be J.

On the plus side, I had no luggage problems, the MAD lounge is nice, and everyone spoke English.

Altaflyer, You might want to reserve those comments since you imply you haven't flown IB. I'd much rather pay for sub-par food on AA than get free inedible "food" from IB in J. And yes the MAD lounge is nice, but it's also in a shiny new terminal which happens to be their hub. The LHR lounge for IB is not so great for example. I missed the BCN lounge as I was in a hurry, but maybe someone can comment.

You are correct, I have not YET flown IB but I am up for a challenge...in December :) I have flown AA and have sampled their purchased inedible crap so I guess I'd assume at worse it would be a wash :) Also, I reiterate that service on AA would not be anything like the hostile reception that appears to be the norm on IB. Thank God half my flying is on the IB regional partner which I understand is far superior to mainline IB!

I hope you have a better experience and let us know how it goes. (And how you liked Air Nostrum- I'm guessing)

Thanks all for the comments guys.

rrgg you seem to have experienced the same as me, and of course agree about the fact that their J just isn't J. Its a disgrace in my opinion.

And this is the difference between IB and AA Altaflyer - I agree that AA are pretty poor down the back, but their shorthaul premium cabin is a real one, and they do provide entertainment options etc on longer domestic flights. AA short/mediumhaul Y may be only OK-to-poor, but IB are just poor, poor, poor on short/mediumhaul in Y and J.

And the less said about gazpatcho in Sydney the better Viajero ! :eek: ;)

Jekyll and Hyde - definitely agree
 

My experiences with Iberia consist of them losing my bag for 11 days whilst going round europe in 2003 - my bag went to more cities than I did... but that was all made good with an upgrade to J on GIG-MAD coming back from my South American trip (on an award ticket no less) for me and my partner . And I am a lowly silver/ruby with QF :D

Just to add my 2 cents after a JFK-MAD-NCE RT recently:

Iberia longhaul (i.e. JFK-MAD): Very "adequate". A lot like AA in fact if you are on a 767 except here you are on an A340. FA's are tolerable though not friendly. Food is a notch above AA IMHO, though good luck getting descriptions from FA's beyond "Pasta or Beef". You do get free wine with dinner. IFE is almost non-existant. For an 8 hours flight IFE was one movie shown on a main screen viewable from a handful of seats.

We also experience what others have mentioned here with regard to them giving away confirmed assigned seats for no reason. When we checked in at NCE for our NCE-MAD-JFK return yesterday we were told we had to pickup our BPs in MAD. We were told our window seats (it's a 2-4-2) were confirmed. At MAD, we go to Customer Service where we see our BPs print out as STANDBY!! Then they go away clicking and clacking and after 5 minutes ask what is happening and he just says we'll be more than happy and to be patient. OK. I thought maybe we were getting OpUped to J as Sapphire. Nope.... Finally they print out two seats together in the middle section and they tell us we're lucky they got us those becuase they are oversold. Perhaps we were under the circumstances - circumstances in which they GAVE AWAY our assigned seats despite our checking in at NCE at 12 and in MAD at 2 for a 5pm flight to JFK!


Now the regional service MAD-NCE was wonderful. on a < 2 hour flight a meal was served, service was extremely friendly, the seats comfy, etc. I enquired of a FA why the service was so much nicer than on IB mainline and she smiled and explained that Air Nostrum (which does regional service for IB) operates as ALL BUSINESS CLASS. And it shows (note it's intra-Europe Biz, so standard coach sized seats). Very enjoyable experiences both ways on Air Nostrum.

Lounge in MAD: Very very nice.

Summary: They are OK. Fine. nothing special, not the worst ever. As AA Plat it's nice to have lounge access and priority checkin - but I'd not go out of my way to fly them again. And they really need to learn how to hold confirmed reserved seats - if a passenger has already checked in for the 1st of a two leg flight and it's on time, there's just no reason to give away assigned seats on the connecting flight.

Hmm... Daveland-- I'd consider IB transatlantic J for the new seats, but I don't see how your experience is "a lot like AA" since you listed (1) no IFE; 1 movie not viewable by all, (2) losing assigned seats for no reason (IB also did this to me twice even though my seats were not reassigned to anyone else), (3) FA's are not friendly (understandment of the year). YMMV

Where were you flying that would require a 5+ hour flight on an A320? They can't really fly that much further than that in the first place?

Sorry to break it to you, but I can't think of any A320 services on any OW carrier in Europe (BA, AY or IB) where they provide any IFE even in J (BMED is the big exception here) so not quite sure what you are comparing them with.

What you need to keep reminding yourself is that the rest of the world is not like Australia and Asia where they provide IFE services if even main screen services on regional routes.

I believe BA's regional 767s have IFE although dispite flying them even on some longer journeys (3+ hours), I have yet to experience it.

At least late last year MAD-BCN-CAI was on a 320.........
Moderately friendly FAs to BCN (in J)
Ground staff in CAI useless

Happy (or unhappy as the case may be) wandering

Fred

I believe I watched the soon-to-be-classic National Treasure, starring Nicholas Cage, for the first of many in-flight times, on a BA A320 IST-LHR last year.

Yes, Euro BA 767s have main screen IFE, too.

This was in Y, not J. The J seats did look nice-ish. What is with that color though? ;-)

To your points, my last international AA flight on a 767 did not have any IFE in coach aside from a main screen - so comparable in that regard vs. say VS where you get seatback IFE in coach. and to #3, I've had plenty of unfriendly AA FA's in the back of the bus!

But you are correct that AA is brilliant at holding seats :)

Not sure what about my post stimulated such a (heated ?) response from you Traveloguy, espec. as you will see that most of the posts in the weeks between the OP and your post (and since !), many from regular IB flyers, concur with my experiences and observations. :confused:

The answer to your question is that it was (LHR-) MAD-TLV (and back) which is officially 5h 15m (and on this day was even longer), and is over 7 hours on some flights/days (I found out since) due to a stop-off in Barca on the way/way back. :mad:

Secondly, I'm not sure why you feel the need tell me "...that the rest of the world is not like Australia and Asia" when I live in London (UK), have done so (apart from a year or two) for 30 years, fly mostly shorhaul in Europe (30-40 sectors a year minimum these days - about 60% in Y, 40% in J) - in addition to my relatively frequent travel to the Middle-East, the US, and Asia and Oz - and am making my comments/comparisons in regards these flight experiences. (Did you assume from all my posts on QF Forum etc that I am Oz/Asia based ?)

And you 'break it' to me ( :confused: ) that "any A320 services on any OW carrier in Europe..." on a flight of that length would not have IFE etc, but if you have a good look at my post you will see that that is exactly the point - why are they flying such an aircraft on such a route ? No other OW carrier would. And why, on top of this, do IB choose (as their management have) not to use video equipment that they actually have on board ? Even the LCCs/charter carriers on similar length route from London for e.g. (the likes of Monarch etc) provide IFE on the big screen.

On the equiv. routes (LON-TLV, LON-CAI, etc) BA fly on 'long haul aircraft' with a 3 class service, with full service in Y with personal screen IFE, NCW seats in J, and the full F service (yes, including the 'pyjamas' if you ask for them ! ;) ). And see Gardyloo's post re. your other BA observation.

Therefore, in answer to the real question at hand here, on 5h+ direct international flights in my experience EVERY SINGLE other OW carrier apart from IB provides IFE etc ! (Not just QF and CX, but on such medium haul also BA, AA, etc, etc). And one of the reasons is that no other OW carrier (not even I believe [from what I have read on FT]) the [soon to be departing] LCC that is Scare Lingus) would consider treating (in usual circumstances) a 5h+ international flight as short-haul, and impose such a low level of experience/comfort on its paying pax.

And ALL other OW carriers certainly have real J on flights of such length - not one that has the same identical seats etc as in Y, just with a different seat head-cover, and a very minimal addition to the Y meal offering. :rolleyes:

These infact are the points we need to 'keep reminding' ourselves of ;) :p .

I also find it odd that you can't see these points when, again as I posted, the IB CSM/D onboard the flight itself expressed her own annoyance at the very same issues (and had tried herself, without success of course, to get management to change policy) !

And, btw, whether you intended to or not (and I would like to assume having read many of your posts on FT before that you didn't), your opening comments about my experience ("Where were you flying that would require a 5+ hour flight on an A320? They can't really fly that much further than that in the first place?") read as if/implied that you don't believe that they actually took place. Your shock/amazement at the fact that IB would fly such a lengthy route on such an aircraft and with so little services should instead be reserved for/directed at IB itself.

It is my opinion (and of other here, as previous posts testify [like wandering_fred's - who I see was forced by IB to do just such a stop-off in Barca on way to the Middle-East :mad: ]) that it is a disgrace that in 2006 an OW carrier operate such a flight/service. (And please remember that IB policy now is to run such a service on ALL their routes of such/similar length, not just to TLV). And this is by any objective standard, not just that of Asian carriers. I have little doubt that if you had actually been on such a flight - like myself, wandering_fred, etc - you would agree 100%.

Apologies. I certainly had no intention of making my post seem to heated! Must be the phase of the moon! :o

I do feel however that it seems many people go on an IB flight expecting things will go wrong and often things do go wrong largely because people go in with that negative attitude - i.e. it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Ouch! I would never have expected an A320 operating on that route.

I should mention that BA do have a route that is slightly longer and that is the LGW-SSH service which is also on a A320 and unfortunately also offers the same level of IFE (i.e. nothing). LGW-RAK is also pretty similar.

Actually my comment was not meant to be taken in such light but apologies again - it was certainly not my intention to cause offence!

I do however feel that regional European flights (& to North Africa) possibly has the worst service in the world. In general carriers provide little or no IFE even on medium haul to long haul Euro flights and the seating tends to be tight. This applies to both BA, IB as well as other European carriers - just ask Smirnoff and his feelings on BA's offerings to Moscow - there is a whole thread devoted to the topic! ;)


That's the thing. I have been on many 3-4 hour flights on BA and I have yet to see any IFE beyond the safety demos.

The routes you quote are premium routes for BA and don't reflect the whole BA Euro flight network. There is quite a large Jewish population here in London and therefore lots of business traffic and the same for CAI. High numbers necessitate the use of a larger aircraft thus all the facilities as all 777s etc have NCW etc. Remember that even on the LHR-TLV route, the 767 service which operates one of the two dailies was only recently 'dusked' a few months back so if you got that old 767 served flight and you were in Club, you would end up in a 'CE punishment seat'!

I think my statements above show that there are several other medium haul routes with a similar service on BA.

I agree that the above is not a good situation. IB (and BA) really should be providing better services on flights of 3.5+ hours, especially for those sitting in premium cabins considering the fares they charge on these routes. My only point in my post is that I feel that IB often takes stick for its services, but they are not the only guilty carrier. I have only flown on LHR-HEL route or Asian routes with AY so I really cannot comment on what equiptment they ply on their medium haul routes, but on the 3 hour shuttle to LHR they certainly have no IFE - just the usual map. Fortunately they do offer great in-flight service in terms of booze and food so it generally makes up for the lack of IFE.

All I am going to say is thank goodness for the invention of the Ipod! Generally on these sorts of services I take my laptop with a decent movie or TV show and watch that. Unfortunately I suspect that will be the way to go in the future too as none of the competition offer terribly much in Europe. Until that changes I cannot see IB nor BA offering much more than they currently do.

Again, apologies if you felt my post was seen as a personal attack as it certainly was not intended to be! :)

Apologies of course accepted :) . As I said, I was sure that you had not meant to be 'tetchy', the post just happened to read that way ! :p ;)
Yep. Was not fun. :(
On this point we are in agreement - thank god for the iPod indeed ! ;) QF have IFE on 1-2h flights, and indeed so do the likes of SAA, plus as you say many Asian carriers. But on our case in point a 2-3h flight is quite a different matter from a 5-6h one, espec. when your rivals (and OW partners) provide personal screen IFE on their equiv. flights.

And on the other point even on the 3 hour BA Euro services the J cabin is clearly differentiated from Y, and is a vast improvement from IBs equiv. J - meal service I generally think is great (love the BA / Royal Doulton tea cups !), and as long as you are sitting on the left of the cabin ( :rolleyes: ) or in the front row you have a lot more space etc. A far cry from IB.

As for your observations re. the LON-TLV route, the 'large' (less than 0.005% of the British population !) Jewish population factor is of course a part of it, but only a small-ish part. Many such paxs. are in Y (with many other tourists on the route), yet BA have the 3 cabins due to brisk business travel etc (and not just from the UK). I think the bigger issue may be the competition factor - BA need to provide a proper service as they are up against ElAl etc etc on the route. IB have a relative monopoly... and prob. believe that by having such a basic service they can charge cheap prices and attract budget pax. to buy connecting flights with them from other Europe hubs as a consequence. :mad:

And its not like IB are not running a J service on the route - they are, its just an insult for one. There must be more than a little premium class business to and from the Middle-East from Spain etc... and maybe they would attract more of it if they actually provided a real J service.

As for the times BA flew 767s on the TLV route, this is why I wrote about 'usual circumstances' ! When there is war/Intifada (but not a bad enough one for them to temp. drop the route altogether [i.e. Gulf War I]) the demand drops significantly and they temp. stick on awful (IB style ! ;) ) aircraft on the route. My point is that IB do it all the time !

Finally...... maybe you had read my post assuming I was just such a person ?!? :eek: ;) Seriously, its a fair enquiry, but I can assure you this was not the case with me - I arrived to fly with them in a positive frame of mind as they always upgrade me, and then had this terrible experience. It was a disgrace... and I'm now voting with my feet. Its bye bye IB for me.

Well, only on "new aircraft since May 2005", which, if I read the BMed website correctly is 2 out of 8.

I don't see anything stating 2 out of 8 although I am not aware all the aircraft having been upgraded yet.

If you are in Club even on a non-upgraded plane you will still get the decent seat though so it is still pretty good.

Indeed - the old BA Club World seat. And I see that they will very shortly start two new routes to West Africa (Freetown and Dakar) which open up the continent a little bit more for RTW people.

IB has no 32" pitch in economy...at least nowadays after fleet reconvertion and new"re-reconvertion" to high density planes according to informationpublished on IB's corpaorate web director plan: http://grupo.iberia.es/content/Grupo...bre%202005.pdf
pages 52,53....says pitch28" to 30" in economy class

I will suffer IB's Y "canned" econnomy product to moscow next month..I will try to get an UPG for this flight...

A320 does MAD - DME In essence 5 hours

Ouch. That's worse than even QF manage to stuff them down the back! :eek:

Whilst I don't understand much Spanish, looking at the presentation it looks as though this is coming in between 2006 and 2008 so the future certainly does not look bright for those of us sitting down the back. Mind you, even BA is reducing their pitch as when their new seating comes in it will also be a bit tighter.

What's going on in Europe? :(

I had IFE on BA ATH-LHR in August. It was a few comedy shows and I think some news. IB offers nothing on ATH-MAD.