The BA Fiasco

I meant to make a comment about this a while ago, when I heard the news report that for the first time in twelve days, passengers on BA longhaul flights would have hot meals provided (I think this would have been around last Tuesday).

This got me thinking about the way things used to be done by BA at Heathrow. Back in the day, there was a massive BA facility called Catering Centre South located (unsurprisingly) on the south side of Heathrow. A hugely impressive facility, it used to produce all of the catering for BA's flights out of Terminal Four (all the longhaul in those days) and if memory serves, a certain proportion of the Terminal 1 departures.

Now of course, Catering Centre South is no longer a BA facility, because in one of the airline's many cost-cutting exercises, the business was sold off. Curiously, it seems that very facility is now Gate Gourmet's Heathrow centre of operations.

BA do this kind of thing on a regular basis, and for some weird reason, it seems that every time they do, the decision comes back to haunt them, usually in the form of massive passenger disruption and negative publicity. I suspect that the weird reason is that they do it for short term savings and then create a situation where the sold-off business is beholden to BA to operate effectively, resulting in long term problems when they try to squeeze them as a supplier (wich BA have admitted they did to GG the last time they negotiated their contract). I guess them learning the lesson would be out of the question.

And on the subject of bad publicity - I think three quarters of the negative comment I heard from passengers affected by the situation was about not being told what was going on. Keeping passengers informed during disruption used to be one of the central tennets of BA customer service standards. The recognition is that an airline is subject to so many uncontrollable factors that some disrution is inevitable, so when it happens, keep people informed and they'll be way more understanding than if they don't know what's going on.

It seems like that may be another thing that BA let fall by the wayside as it's gone along.

EDIT - I was just checking out the Catering Update on the BA Website ahead of a flight I'm taking tomorrow:
"Currently the only catering available on-board our shorthaul flights is tea and coffee, however either a voucher for use in the terminal or a deli-bag will be available to collect prior to boarding."

FFS...

Posted on August 30, 2005 09:33 PM

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