British Airways used to bill itself, without irony, as ‘the nation’s favourite airline’. The days when it could legitimately use such a slogan are long gone. Now, the unfortunate passengers who endure a substandard service on the carrier are more likely to regard it as the nation’s least beloved airline, vying only with Ryanair for a distinctly lacklustre experience from start to finish. Flying with BA used to be about glamour, excitement and quiet customer satisfaction. More recently, it is all about penny-pinching, discomfort and boredom, with a side helping of inexplicable fear creeping in.
Those travelling with the airline are paying a premium cost for a budget service
The news that the airline is to scrap its hot food service on some of its short-haul European routes for business-class passengers at breakfast time may not, in itself, seem especially consequential. Most people feel little sympathy for the minor inconveniences of the wealthy. So it’s unlikely many tears will be shed for those Club Europe travellers who find themselves downgraded from a full English – which was never, in truth, the most sophisticated or enjoyable of in-flight meals – to a so-called ‘continental breakfast’ of fruit plate, yoghurt and pastry.
If you’re silly enough to splash out on such an experience – which, in truth, is simply economy class with pretensions – then you deserve what you get; in practice, a good number of those travelling on short Club Europe flights will be doing so courtesy of their employer or via loyalty points. Yet the sense that corners are being cut and a deadening cheapness infecting every corner of the operation is now wholly pervasive. It seems a very, very long time since that iconic Hugh Hudson-directed advertisement in the 1980s, which may now seem dated but made BA look like a brand that combined British heritage with cutting-edge cool. Now, the airline is indeed another representation of Britain in microcosm: tired, beleaguered and eye-wateringly expensive.
If BA had lowered their notoriously high prices over the past few years to bring them into line with budget airlines such as EasyJet and Ryanair, then some of the privations that passengers endure would be more understandable. However, those travelling with the airline are paying a premium cost for a budget service: a state of affairs that has lasted for a considerable time. Last year, I flew to Italy with BA and returned on EasyJet. It was telling that the experience on the latter was preferable in every conceivable regard, from the warmth and professionalism of the staff to the extra leg room. On BA, the sole incentive that I was given to fly economy was the smallest bottle of water I have ever seriously been offered and a biscuit. It was not enough to secure my future custom.
To the company’s credit, they understand that they have a problem. Their boss Sean Doyle has scrapped the old motto ‘To Fly, To Serve’, perhaps because he knew that he ran the risk of being laughed out of the skies. It has been replaced with a more proactive ‘Find It, Fix It’ approach. New planes are being purchased, and there have been conscious efforts, especially in long-haul first and business class, to improve the service so that it can keep pace with the likes of Cathay Pacific, Emirates and its long-standing rival Virgin Atlantic. Yet is it too little, too late? The company has been a national laughing stock for many years now, regularly racing to the bottom of polls of most-loved airlines.
Doyle would have to be both superhuman and blessed with extraordinary amounts of luck in order to bring about the greatest turnaround for a British endeavour since the battle of Agincourt. Shakespeare’s Henry V may have praised his fellow soldiers as ‘we few, we happy few, we band of brothers’, but as BA’s dwindling band of loyal flyers look around for other options, the company will have its work cut out to bring back the unhappy few into its embrace once again.
Comments