British Airways throws Alex Cruz under a bus (again) in a Sunday Times interview

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• PhillC says:

  9 Jul9 July 10:43

  Interesting article from many perspectives. Club world food is definitely the worst of all major carriers imho. If I could share a photo, it would be of the horrendous chicken pie that I have (foolishly) tried twice. New business suite is better than most.
  Didn’t know about blocked middle seat in economy- is that accurate (as a good member).

  • Rob says:

    9 Jul9 July 11:49

    The system blocks the seat next to you unless flight is full. It is not a publicised benefit because it is withdrawn on full services.

    • Andrew Roberts says:

      9 Jul9 July 14:55

      I have repeatedly called the Gold Line as a gold and asked them to block the seat next to me unless the flight is full. I am always told this is not possible and is no longer a gold benefit. What am I doing wrong?

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        9 Jul9 July 15:21

        it’s done via an automated process done in the background so calling won’t help.

      • Steve R says:

        9 Jul9 July 17:27

        If you check on Expert Flyer 3ish days before departure, an empty seat next to will show as an X which is blocked.

        Twice in the last month I have had an empty seat next to me in an otherwise full CE cabin.

      • Rob says:

        9 Jul9 July 17:35

        It just happens. You don’t request it. Obviously you need to select a seat with no-one next to you in the first place, the system then blocks the adjacent seat. If you do a dummy ticket purchase immediately afterwards then, as long as the flight is fairly empty, you should see the seat next to you greyed out.

    • His Holyness says:

      9 Jul9 July 15:04

      Which they stole from bmi and Lufthansa Group.

      • Nick says:

        9 Jul9 July 18:50

        It’s an Amadeus function, so not stolen from anyone. They just choose to use it.

        • QFFlyer says:

          10 Jul10 July 00:02

          Indeed, Qantas do it too for their Platinum/P1/CL members, it’s informally known as a “Platinum Phantom”. I’m very grateful for it when it occurs!

        • His Holyness says:

          10 Jul10 July 12:45

          BA were about 15 years late to the party. It pre-dates Altea (Amadeus) easily early 00s.

    • WW says:

      10 Jul10 July 08:43

      Always grateful for that blocked seat, next to me. Especially on LCY Embraer flights; where the seating config is always 2×2. On a recent LCY-BCN flight, CE was totally full and looked so cramped!. While I in economy, had the luxury of space. Space that a blocked seat offered!

• Nick says:

  9 Jul9 July 10:50

  “personally I liked him”

  Of course you did, that was his main goal. Alex’s major flaw was to run the premium part of company to please bloggers, flyertalk and social media, not shareholders or actual customers. All of the big things were done in such a way to gather praise in places such as HfP but it came at the expense of longevity and utility. For example, ‘the bloggers want a door and fast’ meant that became the prime goal on CS, and other important elements of utility were ignored. And a lot was thrown at CW catering for blog flights, but the real-world implementation had a lower budget and the photo standards couldn’t be maintained.

  • Blair Waldorf Salad says:

    9 Jul9 July 12:01

    Same happened under SD when the bloggers got JFK new lounge experiences that couldn’t be sustained. Plus ça change

  • Rhys says:

    9 Jul9 July 12:56

    We are regularly on BA for ‘real world’ flights.

    We’re lucky to be on a BA press trip once a year if we’re lucky!

    • Rob says:

      9 Jul9 July 13:19

      I’ve never been on a BA press flight in 11 years.

      We didn’t attend the wine tasting jolly in the South of France last month either.

      • Steve says:

        9 Jul9 July 15:18

        Someone’s got sour grapes not being invited on the wine trip 🙄

        • Rob says:

          9 Jul9 July 17:28

          We don’t allow staff to go on media trips with no discernable purpose. Sometimes we compromise and they can go if they take the time as holiday. Every day one of the team is out is a day when the other two have to shoulder their workload.

        • Alex Sm says:

          10 Jul10 July 00:48

          Rhys seems to be on the road half of his time and you Rob often work during trips

    • Blair Waldorf Salad says:

      9 Jul9 July 13:45

      Calm down; I don’t consider HfP a blogger/vlogger. There are many of them though, and some seem like utter pains in the behind

  • Louise Evans says:

    9 Jul9 July 13:07

    I am pleased to hear that BA is getting back on its feet after the ravages of Covid 19. As the former Director of Communications & Sustainability at BA from 2018-2021, I know how horrendous the impact of Covid 19 was on BA’s people and customers. I also know that it is factually incorrect for @johnarlidge to characterise Alex Cruz as a cost cutting axe man. He wasn’t. True, Alex introduced ‘buy on board’, in economy, which John Arlidge told me many times he saw as a backward step. It may or may not have been a good decision for the customer but BA is a business that has to ride two horses – compete for premium and value seeking customers and this sometimes means making unpopular but sound economic decisions. From 2018 until January 2020 Alex oversaw a period of investment in BA – new aircraft, new seats, new food and backing of sustainable aviation fuels before the industry was interested. He also made the brave decision in January 2020 to stop BA’s flights to China for which he was also criticised. Nevertheless where he led, others quickly followed.

    • Nick says:

      9 Jul9 July 13:41

      Thank you for your input Louise and, as a ‘premium’ customer for several decades now, I appreciate your personal view that, “BA is a business that has to ride two horses – compete for premium and value seeking customers and this sometimes means making unpopular but sound economic decisions.”

      However, maybe you’d agree that BA’s, possibly monopolistic, but IMHO, probably more likely, oligopolistic position, at LHR, means that those decisions are likely to be sublevel, in quality terms, to other carriers, which, again, IMHO, now provide a better service to their ‘premium’ customers?

      • JDB says:

        9 Jul9 July 14:49

        Other European airlines have equally monopolistic positions at their home bases plus have the luxury of government subsidies in various forms. BA also has to compete vs heavily subsidised ME and US airlines as well as LCCs, so they are always having to make tough choices. BA also has (like LH) a big pension issue not faced by many competitors – US airlines got rid of much liability through Chapter 11 and some European airlines have had their government’s take on the liability. The recent rise in rates aids BA for this particular issue.

        • Nick says:

          9 Jul9 July 15:13

          Sure, that’s probably the case, BUT, I’d guess that most ‘premium’ customers really don’t give a damn about the likes of the, now, totally inequitable, salary based, or average salary based, defined benefit pensions, which anyone else working in the private sector today haven’t seen for around two decades.

          Customers today look at what’s available today, not in the past, and they’ll act accordingly.

          Sure, getting the mix right is extremely difficult, and I get that, but, right now, IMHO, BA are, and will continue to be well behind the competition.

• David S says:

  9 Jul9 July 10:51

  Two things jump out to me apart from those already mentioned.

  Firstly BA didn’t look for opportunities during Covid , eg for extra aircraft and making process and staffing improvements when flights were minimal.
  Secondly Cruz was at least visible although often for the wrong reasons. Doyle is sadly invisible as is BA in terms of acknowledging problems and fixing them and doing positive PR to announce changes. You just get the impression that they have their heads in the sand and as long as customers continue paying then things are ok.

  • Peter K says:

    9 Jul9 July 20:18

    Almost no company made big investments in covid. Certainly committing to buy aircraft or paying large amounts to train staff (likely over zoom due to covid restrictions) was way down the list of priorities.
    Not going bust was the main objective at that time for most airlines.

  • Rhys says:

    10 Jul10 July 09:15

    If you don’t think BA made changes to staffing during covid then you should speak to the thousands of ex-Worldwide cabin crew!

• Hak says:

  9 Jul9 July 11:11

  Well it’s standard practice for the new boss to blame the previous one for all the troubles and ills a business may face.

  To further add to the anecdotal evidence discussed here there are three issues that have made flying BA a far worse experience (so much so that I will fly pretty much anyone else long haul). First Class staff are now either poorly trained or lacking in number. Boarding in the US has been a free for all on the past five occasions. Two, Manchester lounge is now an Escape lounge which had poor food and contains quite a few folk that are pissed up (to be fair it isn’t much different from the Concorde lounge in Heathrow). Three, the IT system is truly abysmal.

  • Tom says:

    9 Jul9 July 11:25

    “First Class staff are now either poorly trained or lacking in number” mostly I agree with Rob’s analysis but this is the thing that BA has got very badly wrong to me, not just in First but the general longhaul premium soft product is just comical across F/J/W.

    You can put crew on EasyJet wages with EastJet training in Club Europe and people will complain, but they have no choice really as what are they going to do? There is no other airline offering business class on most routes and a lot of passengers are connecting to longhaul and so don’t pay for CE independently in the first place.

    You CANNOT do that in longhaul premium, especially right now when so much of the demand is premium leisure travel that cares about these things, not the usual business traveller that just wants to sleep. I am Gold Guest List through a silly number of annual Club Europe flights but go out of my way to fly someone else but BA longhaul these days. Even to the US I’m gradually moving to United Polaris and Delta. Club Suite only gets you so far when the cabin is filthy, the crew expect to spend almost the entire flight gossiping/playing games in the galley and the flight arrives an hour or more late because Terminal 5 is a disaster.

    • Rhys says:

      9 Jul9 July 13:04

      I did a couple of easyJet flights recently. Ignoring the delays, cancellations etc, the crew were excellent, shuttling down the plane selling meals and drinks from the in-flight menu. I thought they did an excellent job.

      • Tom says:

        9 Jul9 July 14:24

        I assume you didn’t pay 400 EUR each way? My point isn’t that there is anything wrong with EasyJet or EasyJet crew, it’s that BA presents as a premium experience but then delivers at a level marginally above a LCC.

        • Nick says:

          9 Jul9 July 15:49

          “…the crew expect to spend almost the entire flight gossiping/playing games in the galley…”

          Sadly, I have to agree with that, and especially, in my experience, in a very short time frame!

          I don;t know what’s going on at BA, but, IMHO, service has gone noticeaby downhill over the past year, or so.

          I sometimes think that, just like in many hotels & restaurants today, the staff don’t understand the difference between ‘service’ & ‘servitude’.

        • Alex Sm says:

          10 Jul10 July 00:51

          Exactly right so…
          And once they had a slogan “To Fly. To Serve”. Almost no one remembers it now…

• Thomas says:

  9 Jul9 July 12:16

  For me, the old adage ‘in a crisis, service matters’ is something that should be front of mind for Sean Doyle right now.

  No matter what, IRROPs and disruption will always exist in aviation and naturally people remember bad experiences a lot more than they remember good ones. The current BA response when things go wrong is awful, and there will be a lot more detractors created from the current approach than promoters.
  There is, however, an opportunity to turn this all around (eg in terminal resolution, sensible rebooking options, no quibbling over compensation when it’s due or repayment of reasonable expenses, quick telephone answering etc.). If BA did this well, the word of mouth impact could go from ‘never fly BA, they cancelled my flight and took months to refund me’ to ‘to be fair there was a huge storm, but BA rebooked us as soon as they could and they paid for our hotel at Heathrow in a couple of days, I’d fly then again’.

  By all means, get the ‘regular’ ops in order (updated planes, club suite, staff training, passports at Heathrow etc.) but don’t forget about the biggest driver of negative sentiment.

  • JDB says:

    9 Jul9 July 13:43

    BA is probably in the middle of the pack re paying compensation and expenses. Ryanair would be nearer the top and Iberia at or towards the bottom. LH would fall below BA.

    What is unfortunate that so many people here and on many websites encourage people to make frankly derisory complaints/claims that not only clog up the system but make airlines much more questioning so they take more claims to litigation at arbitration/court. They have to draw a line somewhere.

    • Mikeact says:

      9 Jul9 July 16:29

      Our demands/expectations are pretty low nowadays…..(when flying I hasten to add.)
      Nothing compares to flying in the ‘good old days’, 60’s, 70’s and maybe the 80’s.
      I guess many of the issues we’re suffering from today started with the massive growth of travellers around the world…especially cheapo fares etc.
      All we ask nowadays, is, ‘Please, just get us there,safely.’

• Lonjams says:

  9 Jul9 July 12:19

  I travel BA on leisure. Four (of my last five) trips have experienced a delay or short notice cancellation.

  BA, in my experience, is NOT a good airline.

  • Rhys says:

    9 Jul9 July 12:54

    Largely industry-wide at the moment. Same has happened for my two recent easyJet flights. Air traffic control shortages & strikes in Europe are a HUGE problem right now.

    That said, BA is stretched thin right now and therefore struggles to recover quickly from disruption.

    • meta says:

      9 Jul9 July 13:45

      My recent trips with Lufthansa, Swiss, Qatar, Iberia, Etihad, JAL, ANA all had delays. It’s mostly due to airports’ capabilities to handle passengers and less about the airline crew.

      • QFFlyer says:

        10 Jul10 July 00:10

        Been some interesting articles about Qantas doing the same too, particularly on MEL-SYD or similar high frequency routes. If there’s issues elsewhere on the network, they can kill one or more of these flights, consolidate the pax and move the equpment or staff elsewhere; it’s easier to cancel on a route that flies every 15-30 minutes (between multiple carriers) than canning a once daily, or even few times weekly, flight on a route served only by one carrier.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    9 Jul9 July 15:26

    And what was the cause of those delays and cancellations?

    If it was all BAs fault I’d have some sympathy but what if the delay was caused by weather or ATC issues which they have no control over?

    Is it fair to blame BA for those? No it’s not.

• simon says:

  9 Jul9 July 12:42

  Agree with comments here – a CEO should get into the detail (like undercover boss TV shows perhaps ?!) The Business and First product is way behind others for the cost eg Emirates/VA/ Sing etc after many many flights I have experienced….Agree with the comments about staff during the flight being ‘in the galley’ How about still having to wait over 30mins for a first drink after take off when in Business (recently they waited until the dinner service to serve the first post take off drink that was 45 mins ) ..Attention to detail and branding eg White Company,Amenity kits etc not super strong brands IMO preferred items like Dr Harris in First Amenity kit or something more modern…Food still way behind others in all classes…..No business suite on any LGW flights but you pay the same price as a Suite flight from elsewhere?…..no champagne at LGW in the Business Lounge (unless you know to ask for it !) I could go on like others – the CEO should as I say get into the detail and look at the finer smaller details on softer product – we all notice eg crumbs on your business or First seat before you sit down ! Wines and champagnes not that great either…BA staff trained like VA eg how can I help ? Would you like another drink ? Yes as answer rather than No.

• Neal says:

  9 Jul9 July 12:43

  “but certainly better than European rivals Air France KLM and Lufthansa”

  Nonsense. BA F is not in the same league as LH and AF F.

  Flowers were enhanced away from F lavatories and still haven’t made a comeback. BA F soft product is atrocious – my 4 F trips to the US this year all had multiple reasons for complaint – only good thing was BA offered 20K Avios as compensation for each flight …

  • Rob says:

    9 Jul9 July 12:46

    No-one is comparing BA F to AF F, which is a totally different product – four seats, not available (to most) for miles, not discounted etc.

    • Neal says:

      9 Jul9 July 14:44

      Then what you wrote is misleading. If you are not comparing LH and AF F to BA then caveat that. The bullet point you wrote reads like a summary level premium product comparison:

      “- invest in the premium product (Club Suite, First Wing, Do&Co catering) – not to the level that would give a Middle East carrier any sleepless nights, but certainly better than European rivals Air France KLM and Lufthansa”

    • His Holyness says:

      9 Jul9 July 15:07

      It’s comparable to LH and LX F.

    • Mikeact says:

      9 Jul9 July 16:34

      Maybe, but F is F, or should be perceived as such.

      • Alex Sm says:

        10 Jul10 July 00:54

        There is a famous saying that BA’s First is the best business class in the industry. And this is not far from truth. I flew BA First LHR to SIN and then Business on Singapore Airlines further onwards, didn’t see much difference in the level of comfort / service

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