From the 'world's favourite airline' to one of its worst: British Airways continues to nosedive

[mnocket]

This is an interesting read.  For long-haul American and United join BA in the list of the 5 worst airlines.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7807705/British-Airways-plummets-survey-nations-favourite-airlines.html

 

[Zach1213]

I'm a OneWorld Emerald member so I practically live on AA and BA planes, usually in Business or First class. In the 13 or so years I've been doing so, I have seen BA drop a bit, I will admit. I still generally have good experiences on BA (and, frankly, AA) when all is said and done. 

 

Air travel is also something people are particularly likely to ***** and moan about, so these kind of satisfaction polls should always be taken with a grain of rice. $1500 is a lot of money to most people, so when they drop $1500 on a plane ticket they may often expect more than they're really going to get. Combine that with many (most?) people finding air travel a stressful and negative experience from the outset, and any little thing will be a thorn in their experience. 

 

I have also flown some truly bad, even unsafe airlines in the world and BA, AA, and UA are light years ahead of them. I've even been on airlines that have gone out of business because of a combination of corruption, mismanagement, and a nasty habit of flying multiple planes in to the ground. But even when that airline was in business, I remember reading that United (or something similar) was "the worst airline in the world". 

[fbgd]

I'm a BA Gold cardholder and have had mid or top tier frequent flyer status on BA continuously for more than 15yrs now so I'm pretty familiar with the BA experience... 

 

A few things to note:

1) The Daily Mail hates BA, and always has. 

2) BA is really no different to any other airline in economy. Of their 279 aircraft only 12 are known to have seats worse than the industry standard (787-8s in economy which are well know for narrow seats). If you want to throw in 30" pitch across the shorthaul fleet as well go on then but it's pretty standard for shorthaul...

3) BA have legitimately invested in a decent amount of money into new products. In recent years they've introduced a separate premium security channel at LHR Terminal 5 for First and Gold cardholders, the catering on longhaul premium cabin flights has improved greatly, as well as the bedding and they're introducing a top of the line new business class seat.

 

Joe Public's opinion to flying is largely ridiculous, IMO. Flying has never been cheaper and on a pricing standpoint BA compete fairly against the low cost carriers such as Easyjet, as well as having similar onboard service.  Yet for some reason people seem to hold BA to some higher standard from years ago when they were a full service carriers with hot meals on 35min flights in economy, ignoring the fact they're cheaper than they've ever been. 

 

Is there room for improvement at BA? Yes.

Is it one of the worst airlines in the world? That's laughable.

Edited December 19, 2019 by fbgd

[Zach1213]

3 minutes ago, fbgd said:

Flying has never been cheaper and on a pricing standpoint BA compete fairly against the low cost carriers such as Easyjet, as well as having similar onboard service.  

 

This is where BA, and most of the legacy European carriers, have a competition that...frankly, doesn't exist to the same scale in the US. Easyjet and Ryanair are truly gigantic carriers offering (often extremely) low pricing, and the BA's/AF's/Lufthansa's/Iberia's/Alitalia's/etc. must compete or die (and many smaller countries have lost their own national carriers, for various reasons but one common culprit is competition from Easyjet and Ryanair). BA must compete on their fees, their seats, their service, their network...and people will ***** and moan anyways. This is what happens when the vast majority of consumers want the cheapest flight above all else. 

 

Yes, the US has Spirit/Allegiant/Frontier, but these three airlines combined don't have the fleet size of Easyjet or Ryanair separately. And airlines like Southwest/JetBlue/Alaska are really not discount carriers, so they don't really work in that equation. 

 

 

[jollyjones]

Deleted, I don't think I got my comment correct.

Edited December 20, 2019 by jollyjones

[waterbug123]

19 hours ago, Zach1213 said:

when they drop $1500 on a plane ticket they may often expect more than they're really going to get. Combine that with many (most?) people finding air travel a stressful and negative experience from the outset, and any little thing will be a thorn in their experience.

 

This^^^

Another example:  People spend a few extra bucks to fly economy comfort/comfort+ but expect it will be "almost like flying first class."  That's a very unrealistic expectation, but it's the one they have so then they end up disappointed.  And non-frequent flyers especially tend to be very negative in their outlook, before they even get on the plane.  They seem surprised (and disappointed) when it takes a little while to get through security, they seem surprised (and disappointed) when they check in and their bag is overweight and costs them and extra $40 bucks, and on and on.  If you set realistic expectations from the outset, the flying experience doesn't need to be as stressful, negative or disappointing as many make it out to be.

[iancal]

We would select a BA transatlantic flight (and have) over United or American any day.

[jollyjones]

8 hours ago, iancal said:

We would select a BA transatlantic flight (and have) over United or American any day.

Different strokes ...

 

I would (and usually do) select AA transatlantic any day. And I cross the pond multiple times a year.

 

All aisle access! Storage space! Wider seats, four across instead of eight across! OK, this is business - BA must have one of the worst business products on the market even if their food does seem to have improved recently.

[MSUjohn]

I flew british airways for the first time from LHR to CPH this last October (2019) on their "euro traveler" service which I would say is essentially analogous to us domestic service (similar route distances and airport size connections).

 

I will say delta blows them (ba) away in this type of service. delta has complementary drink service including a wide variety of juices, fizzy drinks, tea and coffee; ba does not. I hade to pay money to buy my father a coffee that was served in a err "filter pod", he did not like it. delta has a wide variety of complementary snacks including fruit served with their refreshment service. ba has none. delta has seatback ifes in all but their oldest aircraft ba has none.  speed bird's inflight experience was a bit disappointing.

 

this aussie av geek's review of ba says a lot. 

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by MSUjohn

[1982CruzStart]

In November we took 2 BA flights from DBX to LHR and LHR to YVR. They were both in their ancient 747's, those planes need to be retired as they are not keeping them in very good shape.   We were upstairs and in the past i have really enjoyed flying upstairs with BA but both flights were just okay and the food almost inedible.  For our flights to Europe next year i made sure we weren't flying with them.  

[sumiandkage]

On 12/19/2019 at 3:15 PM, fbgd said:

Joe Public's opinion to flying is largely ridiculous, IMO. Flying has never been cheaper and on a pricing standpoint BA compete fairly against the low cost carriers such as Easyjet, as well as having similar onboard service.  Yet for some reason people seem to hold BA to some higher standard from years ago when they were a full service carriers with hot meals on 35min flights in economy, ignoring the fact they're cheaper than they've ever been. 

 

 

 

The problem is that when you strip away the 'frills', you discover a number of things BA does poorly. You have a Buy on Board option where a catering department in the name of minimizing waste will only load enough food to meet about 30% of demand. You have a global airline that lacks a truly universal 24 hour way of contacting customer service (and no the 'you just have to Skype the Kuala Lumpur service center' or whatever the workaround is doesn't count) and you have IRROPS service recovery that is often truly dismal, especially if it happens during Kuala Lumpur hours, to the point where Southwest was doing that kind of service recovery better back when their entire reservation system was being operated by a Commodore 64 computer powered by a hamster on a treadmill. 

 

And they also don't do great working around known issues. Yes, there will be fog at Heathrow and that airport has been lobbying for  much needed third runway for decades. So have a better fog recovery plan and admit already that the third Heathrow runway is going to happen about the same time either the opening of Berlin Bradenberg or the apocalypse and do a better job of mitigating congestion issues already. 

[FlyerTalker]

8 hours ago, sumiandkage said:

And they also don't do great working around known issues. Yes, there will be fog at Heathrow and that airport has been lobbying for  much needed third runway for decades. So have a better fog recovery plan and admit already that the third Heathrow runway is going to happen about the same time either the opening of Berlin Bradenberg or the apocalypse and do a better job of mitigating congestion issues already. 

 

It has been rumored that BA has been against the third runway.  LHR is slot controlled, with BA holding the lion's share.  A third runway would open up the possibility of additional slots which would most likely go to BA's competitors.

 

FWIW, my bet is on this order:  Brandenburg opens, Apocalypse ends the world and then the third runway.

[bennybear]

Agree that BAs international business product even on the Dreamliner pales in comparison to Air Canada for example.  Don’t like crawling over anyone to get to the aisle or anyone crawling over me!  Though the food was ok,  though what is with all the Chicken Tikka on an overnight flight?  But their customer service ranges from very helpful if you reach their Newcastle or Manchester offices to abysmal if you end up offshore! 

But the European flights in business have less leg room than most economy’s!  

Edited December 28, 2019 by bennybear

[wowzz]

What IAG have done well,  is drive down costs, to such an extent that it is now (depending on your criteria) the third most profitable airline group in the world (Delta would be number one). From a shareholder point of view, this is a pretty good performance,  especially as they are competing with the likes of Ryanair,  easyjet on European routings.

The downside is that customer service, inflight experience etc has deteriorated whilst profitability has gone up. 

I'm not sure how you square the circle of maximising profit and customer satisfaction.  

[sumiandkage]

With Delta, a lot of it is 'empower employees and IT professionals to create a system that fixes problems quickly when they pop up'. Does it look like you're going to misconnect? You can rebook yourself on many routes from the airline's phone app, leaving the customer service reps to handle a smaller number of the more complex rebooking requests and significantly increasing the number of passengers who only lose an hour or two on that misconnect. Employee profit sharing also encourages some better service areas- when a bag delayed more than 20 minutes creates a $25 liability for the company (in the form of 2500 free frequent flyer miles) then the ramp workers are more likely to hustle to keep their annual bonus over 10% of their annual base salary. 

[FlyerTalker]

There is an interesting dynamic going on in the USA market.  UA and AA have been focused on controlling costs, even to the point of AA not including seatback video on their new seating.  DL, OTOH, seems to believe that by making their ground and onboard experience better, customers will choose them. 

 

It has shades of "More Room Throughout Coach", but without the revenue hit of fewer seats.

 

Are customers noticing and making choices in response?  Good question, but for now it seems to be generating better results for DL.

[sverigecruiser]

When I see that SAS is above British Airways I don't care because I then know that the list in incorrect. Just my opinion but the ranking is made by passengers opinions. 

[scottbee]

On 12/29/2019 at 9:13 AM, FlyerTalker said:

There is an interesting dynamic going on in the USA market.  UA and AA have been focused on controlling costs, even to the point of AA not including seatback video on their new seating.  DL, OTOH, seems to believe that by making their ground and onboard experience better, customers will choose them. 

 

It has shades of "More Room Throughout Coach", but without the revenue hit of fewer seats.

 

Are customers noticing and making choices in response?  Good question, but for now it seems to be generating better results for DL.

 

I've been waiting for one of  the big US carriers to give up the penny pinching, raise their fares $25 across the board, and proudly announce "We cost more - but you're worth it".  An extra inch of legroom, a free checked bag, a small meal on 3+ hr flights.

[waterbug123]

19 hours ago, scottbee said:

 

I've been waiting for one of  the big US carriers to give up the penny pinching, raise their fares $25 across the board, and proudly announce "We cost more - but you're worth it".  An extra inch of legroom, a free checked bag, a small meal on 3+ hr flights.

 

Good luck with that wait.   The elite level frequent flyer world already has that option at no extra charge; for instance, Delta medallion members can choose exit rows which have more than an extra inch of legroom, and also get a free checked bag.  And Delta is expanding the domestic routes on which coach pax get a meal.  But the non-frequent flyers?  By and large they prove ever time that they simply want the lowest price, period.  They may gripe about what it does and does not get them, but they keep choosing it.

[fbgd]

21 hours ago, scottbee said:

 

I've been waiting for one of  the big US carriers to give up the penny pinching, raise their fares $25 across the board, and proudly announce "We cost more - but you're worth it".  An extra inch of legroom, a free checked bag, a small meal on 3+ hr flights.

No need to wait. In the 2000s AA introduced More Room Throughout Coach and all seats were switched over to 34”-35” pitch with fares going up a smidge to account for the difference. Within a couple of years AA had moved all the seating back.

 

The flying public at large love to whinge about the lack of comfort and amenities but for the most part aren’t willing to pay anything above the lowest possible fare.

[FlyerTalker]

47 minutes ago, fbgd said:

The flying public at large love to whinge about the lack of comfort and amenities but for the most part aren’t willing to pay anything above the lowest possible fare.

 

And the parallels in the cruise industry are also there for all to see.

[scottbee]

4 hours ago, fbgd said:

No need to wait. In the 2000s AA introduced More Room Throughout Coach and all seats were switched over to 34”-35” pitch with fares going up a smidge to account for the difference. Within a couple of years AA had moved all the seating back.

 

The flying public at large love to whinge about the lack of comfort and amenities but for the most part aren’t willing to pay anything above the lowest possible fare.

That was somewhat ahead of its time.  At that point, the other legacy carriers still offered a fair bit.  If they tried it now

33" coach

small meal on 3+ hr flights

1 checked bag

 

it would be a much bigger distinction

 

Also, sometimes there are some savings to be had that are un-obvious.  For example an AA 737-800 seats 160.  Make that only 150, and you only need 3 not 4 flight attendants (1 per 50 per FAA regulations)

 

[Globaliser]

On 1/4/2020 at 6:31 PM, scottbee said:

That was somewhat ahead of its time.  At that point, the other legacy carriers still offered a fair bit.  If they tried it now

33" coach

small meal on 3+ hr flights

1 checked bag

 

it would be a much bigger distinction

 

I still doubt that this would work in economy. These differences are barely noticeable.

 

However, because economy generally continues to deteriorate everywhere, we are now seeing a growing realisation in the market of the value of long-haul premium economy, so that there is now a distinct market segment that is prepared to pay a bit extra for some real differences. This has led to a recent rash of airlines implementing plans for a PE cabin.

 

The downside for those of us who discovered this a long time ago is that the increased demand has driven up the premium for PE over economy fares. I hope that an increasing volume of supply will bring that back down again.

 

All of this reminds me of when British Rail (as it then was) re-branded its products from First Class and Second Class to First Class and Standard Class. The wags said that they should have re-branded them as "Standard Class" and "Sub-standard Class". PE sort of fits that bill.

 

On 1/4/2020 at 6:31 PM, scottbee said:

Also, sometimes there are some savings to be had that are un-obvious.  For example an AA 737-800 seats 160.  Make that only 150, and you only need 3 not 4 flight attendants (1 per 50 per FAA regulations)

 

This may not be obvious to most passengers, but I can assure you that it is extremely obvious to airlines!

[scottbee]

1 hour ago, Globaliser said:

 

All of this reminds me of when British Rail (as it then was) re-branded its products from First Class and Second Class to First Class and Standard Class. The wags said that they should have re-branded them as "Standard Class" and "Sub-standard Class". PE sort of fits that bill.

 

 

The parallels exist in the rail business too

 

Where most of the UK rail operating companies are 1+2 in First, and 2+2 in standard,  South Western are 2+2 in First, and 3+2 in Standard.