Message to British Airways after a recent flight

in #britishairways6 years ago (edited)

The selection of entertainment is piss poor at best. I mean in a world where you can get internet on planes, why not offer customers the ability to login to their own streaming service like Netflix or other streaming provider. be the first to offer this to customers.
Be the first company to do this and people would be delighted with it. You could be a bigger market leader by being the first ones to have a brilliant system. People may get lost in their favourite series instead of watching some trash film
Or offer wifi included in the price of the flight to stream youtube or vimeo or netflix.

When a customer turns down the volume on the entertainment system to save hearing, and an announcement is made the volume goes back up and blasts your ears out of it. This is unbelievably frustrating. Pause the entertainment system, fair enough, but there isn't a need to deafen customers to tell them some announcement.

If it was up to me, and I understand you legally have to make people aware of the safety features of the plane - mute the entertainment system, display a message to unplug earphones on the screen and then play the announcement through the speakers of the plane not through the earphones of the entertainment system.
Also I think it is a bit much to lengthen safety announcement by having celebrities have a song and dance about it. This may be engaging on a tv screen at home but we already bought the ticket on BA, give the information directly to us in the most concise/least painful way possible, without telling us how funny or whatever some celebrity is or advertising BA as being great because a nobody celebrity is getting paid to endorse you.
Having celebrities say part of a sentence each as part of the safety announcement is just annoying.
[ to check if it is enjoyable, have people take part in a survey watching a film and raise the volume of the sound on what they are watching and then play the safety announcement for them and see how the participants of the survey respond to that safety announcement.]

To be fair Turkish airlines are worse with Morgan Freeman but BA annoucements are almost as bad.

On the way to Tokyo, we were loaded onto the plane at Heatrow with the air conditioning not working. Engineers knew this and customers shouldn't have been put on the plane when work was being done on it. It was very uncomfortable. I understand BA exepected this problem would be fixed quickly, but it wasn't and we were left sitting on the plane on the tarmac for maybe an hour to 2 hours, not sure exactly before an 10-11 hour flight. The answer to "Is the plane fit to fly?" should be "yes" before passengers are loaded on board. If something breaks after the passengers are loaded on board then disembark the passengers again if this is possible or practical to do. It might cost BA money but long term you will get more satisfied returning customers.

I ordered my ticket through https://www.onetwotrip.com/ via skyscanner. On their website, I told them I was vegetarian. I don't know why they didn't communicate this with BA, but on the way over to tokyo I wasn't down for a vegetarian meal. The cabin crew told me I should have done this on the BA website as well as the website I ordered the ticket on. I did this for the way back and got the vegetarian meal.
Luckily on the way over there were spare vegetarian meals for me, but I don't get why BA sells tickets through a company that explicitly asks my dietary requirements and then BA either ignores this information from onetwotrip.com or onetwotrip never gives the information to BA. To me I really shouldn't have to request dietary preferences twice. BA should be able to get this information from the travel agents who sell the tickets, if the travel agent records the information.
Going forward obviously I will check the airline's website as well, but for people who don't fly that often or book through Skyscanner, BA could avoid situations like the above by communicating with the travel agent involved.

The queue for loading luggage on board in Tokyo, had 2 counters for economy and 5 or 6 for people who pay slightly more money. Given that economy makes up the least profitable seats, I understand having a few more counters for first class or whatever, but it was kind of unclear when the other counters were empty if economy could check in there to speed things up. That is what did happen in the end, but the management of the crowd was poor at best. Other airlines had a woman who guided people to where they should check in or queue.

BA brought me to Japan and home alive, albeit sweaty and cramped for an hour on the tarmac in Heathrow on the way over [+delayed arriving in Tokyo].

Summary -
shorten safety announcements to only what is required, cut the BS.
improve the entertainment system? netflix?
wifi for streaming?
don't load people on a broken plane
manage luggage/check in better
communicate with travel agents who sell your tickets to find out dietary requirements

Final thoughts : the gap between meals on the flights between Heathow and Tokyo was massive, both legs of the flights. The cabin crew brought tiny snack of 10g of pretzels [ wouldn't feed a robin or a squirrel] , soft drinks, and the choice between water and juice, in between meals but I was hungry on board. Either having the 2nd big meal on a flight like this with 3.5 hours to go instead of 1-2 hours to go to landing would make a serious difference.
Or provide more food, in between the big meals.

The cabin crew of BA were pleasant, but I think management of how that Heathrow to Tokyo operates is poor enough and putting people on a broken plane is a mistake for an hour before a long flight. Obviously I am passionate about improved customer service small changes could make BA flying experiences so much better.

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