To fly to serve?

BA 196 LHR to IAH. Seat 11D in a Triple-7. 

How very tired I was last night. It seems to me to have been an exhausting week. By Friday I was shattered, and it was my daughter's special birthday supper. We had a nice evening, although I had to pack for my business trip to Houston for OTC. In the wet and rainy morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, my wife made me tea and a mushroom omelette and packed me off into the taxi. 

It is pleasant enough not to be on a red-eye, though the crew are treating it as such (as is BA cabin crew’s wont) requiring all the blinds to be shut. The cabin crew will tell you with a straight face that this is what the passengers want. It seems churlish to point out that a cabin full of sleeping passengers means much less work for the cabin crew. 

As a service oriented person one of the things I find quite depressing is the gradual erosion, over a long period of time, of the quality of supplied goods and services. This is true of flying with BA in what used to be a decent business class. I am travelling business class with BA on a long-haul flight. The airfare is in excess of £2500 return – clear two or three times what the economy class return air fare would be – and half as much again as the premium economy return air fare. 

Whilst I appreciate that airlines have to make money in ostensibly difficult trading conditions, I am expecting a minimum standard of service for my (or my employer’s) money, and that minimum, it must be said, is waaay above what BA are offering. It is the gradual erosion of service, the shaving away of benefits like Parmesan shaved from the block, that sticks in my throat.

Three examples: in the past with BA – and other carriers still – the business class passenger was served a BOWL of nuts with his pre-dinner drinks. Small and perhaps unimportant point: we are now served a packet of nuts exactly the same as the people in the back. It is perhaps a small and unimportant point – but that is the point. It is “small and unimportant” bits being shaved off BA’s business class service, until soon enough, little enough is left to distinguish it from anything else. Another example is the salt and pepper: in business class you might expect actual cruets - little pots containing salt and pepper. Not with BA. You get the same poxy little sachets as they serve in economy - and again, the cabin crew will tell you with no hint of irony that this is what passengers want. Odd how what passengers want always seems to be the lower cost option. A third example is the dessert after dinner. Though it is served in a little pottery bowl (rather than the disposable plastic bowl in economy) what is actually IN the bowl is identical in every sense to that served to the people in back. 

Sweat the small stuff - it matters. Today I will go an hour out of my way to avoid flying BA. 

"To fly to serve"? More like "Customers? Who needs 'em?"