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Sadly, I had a rather rubbish experience from Abu Dhabi this AM. The crew we're all volunteers and excellent but ground services were atrocious.

- no F amenity kits
- no meals except a salad and a plate of sandwiches in the style of EuroTraveller - pickle and cheese!
- breakfast: salad only (leftover from the dinner service)
- no newspapers
- no pyjamas
- no premium wine or champagne (a somewhat corked red was on offer but it was rather poor quality). The champagne was those tiny bottles of something awful.

I do appreciate the crew flying but BA totally failed in providing them the right tools to operate the flight. I'm rather upset they failed to at least meet the minimum standard of service that was promised on the strike info pages.

In what the BBC described today as being the busiest day of the strike.. my wife can confirm otherwise, form her various txt messages she says:

- Taxi driver dropper her off at 06:45, he asked... are you sure you're flying today... there were just 5 cars at departure drop off

- no passengers in security screening

- she said staff are killing flies...

There have been warnings posted all over MMB that the services listed may not be delivered in the strike period. It has also been fairly well posted here that all meals will be cold and to be honest where BA is trying to get you from A to B with minimal crew/volunteers I am not surprised at all by your negative list.

Well I am. Other thasn the cold meals, everything else should have been provided as normal (and in most cases BA states that they will be provided). Having no experienced cabin crew makes not a jot of difference to those particular parts of the service.

Although it is known that the meals are going to be cold, I wouldn't have expected them to be complete rubbish up front in First.

OPebble - my expectations were set by BA's rather clear list posted here under the first section:
https://www.britishairways.com/trave...club/_gf/en_gb

They are rather clear what they will provide and what to expect. The service level was below those standards set. No amenity kit, sleeper suit, and the meal should have at least been a meal. Pickle sandwiches or a salad (no meat) do not make a "meal." Or else they should upgrade their ET marketing page to call it a full meal service on the band 1 shorthauls!

Don't go giving him ideas...

BAH

I hope you'll forgive me for posting extracts from a couple of emails I received yesterday. They are from a friend who has never before flown BA longhaul; being rather more an Emirates loyalist. Some months ago I'd helped her book an itinerary to the West Coast US, departing yesterday.

She was re-routed owing to the strike schedule, and apart from a slight glitch in ticketing the revised routing (handled exceptionally professionally by the Disruption Team at Waterside - ba.com/welldone) the contingencies seemed to work as planned, resulting in the following comments:

That was T5 at about 7.30am yesterday.

They flew WTP and were slightly delayed inbound, with a very tight connection. Ground agents met them in the baggage hall with rebooking details onto AAnother domestic flight departing just over an hour later.

Well, that's pAAr for the course .

Seriously though, I'd have thought that for a generally non-BA passenger, faced with all these worries and anxieties pre-travel and then having to cope with the reduced on-board service too, slightly less positive reports might have resulted.

Perhaps then it's a snaphot of (admittedly only two) passengers' views on how visible the effort that the company has put into getting them away is.

And at least I'm still on their Christmas Card list having suggested BA in the first place!

Have just successfully OLCI'd for my short haul flight tomorrow. Fingers crossed it'll all go smoothly. Luckily my flight dates (23rd outbound, 26th inbound) aren't strike dates but an email from BA warned me of possible disruption... so we'll see.

The flight is filling up already. Old habits die hard; despite being silver I checked in at T24 and ended up changing my seat to one with no one in the seat next to it. Knowing my luck the only 12 ton man on the flight is eyeing that middle seat as I type...

ALL vounteers? Are you sure??

If you're talking about ground services in AUH, these three things I left in your quote should have been loaded in LHR.Nothing to do with AUH.
Did you ask the crew why there were none?
Was it one of the reinstated flights?

My wife flew to LCA (a long SH, 4.5 hours) operated by EuroAtlantic airways, I asked what was it like, to quote from a txt.

I guess it was not pleasant being on a charter type aircraft with so very little legroom and of the length of this flight as well, overall including boarding time and deplaning, she was sat for about 6 hours ... *ouch*

but the main purpose I guess was to get her from A-B which it did.

T5 landside was a little quieter than normal this morning, but still quite a few pax passing through. Most surreal to see Transavia and Jet2 crews being escorted through the concourse.

Unsurprisingly ticketing queues were quite big and the wait time long (20mins for me). One area BA could have shifted more people on to.

I recall an earlier strike in which I experienced better service, more courtesy, less hassle and altogether better flying experience. It was not BA.

Today GIG-LHR shows "no information" but tomorrow shows operating but "service different...". I'm hoping we fly successfully today but nobody seems to know for certain.

My wife and I flew LHR - BOS yesterday in WT+ (trip for pleasure, not business).

T5 was pretty empty--very quick through security. BA had their own secondary screening set up over in B and were looking through everyone's bags who was flying to the US. I'd never seen that before--my main concern was around the screeners dipping their hands into every bag filled with filth and moving the germs and bedbugs and lice and whatever else along. I suppose that any industrial action, though picks up the security.

Flight was a little late (20min or so) getting out--some confusion, apparently around the actual names on the list. Given that everyone in the back was standing in, I thought the service was reasonably good. You could see that the economy of movement and the knowledge of what is where wasn't like an experienced crew, but the folks there did their best to help the pax.

The food was actually sourced from Gordon Ramsay's plane food--you know those orange carry on meals? That's what it was.

One of the fill ins was a safety consultant, another was actually a captain. He said it was good to see things from the other side of the door, and that they should probably do this sort of thing more often under good circumstances.

All in all, a reasonable trip--and most importantly, I got back into town on the day I was supposed to and spent the eve with the kids!

So: THANK YOU to the folks who volunteered--you're doing a wonderful thing for the pax and their families.

Flew BA85 to YVR yesterday. Lounges moderately full, security a dream. Crew were late arriving to gate and received a round of applause. Seemed to be a full complement. All catering was normal and crew did a superb job. Managed to bag 62A at t-24 too so quite a result all in all.

Anyone know when BA are going to firm up on tomorrow's short haul schedule? I am due to take the 7.20am flight from LHR to OSL and the status shows as "subject to possible disruption" still.