Normally when passengers don’t receive their meals it’s because of a catering issue. And it’s limited to a few passengers. Maybe they didn’t get their special meal choice, or their first choice wasn’t loaded. If it’s United Airlines, maybe they just ran out of food.
But British Airways flight 56 on July 20 may have had the most surprising reason I’ve seen for passengers not to get fed on a long haul flight: the crew rest seats were broken.
What does that have to do with feeding passengers, especially since it doesn’t appear that there was trouble catering the aircraft?
- Crew on an 11 hour flight get rest breaks.
- Normally on a widebody aircraft they get time in the crew rest area.
- But if those seats are unavailable they’ll assign business class seats for this purpose.
- But they are allocated more time to rest in business class seats compared to crew rest.
Since the crew rest bunks weren’t available on this British Airways flight from Johannesburg to London Heathrow, crew got extra rest, and that didn’t leave enough time to serve breakfast.
According to British Airways,
We’re very sorry that some of our customers didn’t receive a full breakfast service on this flight.
Legally, cabin crew require a minimum rest period during the flight, and unfortunately, this was hampered due to their rest area being taken out of use after departure.
We were able to offer an amended breakfast to customers in Club World and First, with a beverage service offered in our World Traveller and World Traveller Plus cabins.
One British Airways flight attendant says crew often don’t actually rest in these bunks, but do other things instead. I’m not sure that crew rest seats provide better rest than business class seats, in any case.
Keeping business class seats open and available for crew to use for rest suggests that the airline knew that the crew bunks had an issue before the flight departed. BA unquestionably, then, should have informed passengers they would not receive a second meal service in advance to allow them to better prepare – whether bringing more food on board or making sure to eat all of the first meal served to them. The communication here seems like the bigger failure than even not serving the promised meal, and there ought to be compensation for the lack of the meal that customers paid for in their ticket.
Extra rest time aside, does anyone seriously think they couldn’t have STILL found time for the food service?
Why not say that the crew was lazy and used flight rules to shirk part of their job? Would they have continued shirking their jobs in an emergency? How did they make sure passengers were seated while landing?
Why would they get extra rest?
that’s what you get when you dominate one of the world’s most valuable airports.
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Virgin Atlantic flies JNB to LHR but simply isn’t large enough at LHR compared to BA
BA is totally unionized. Customers come last.
I would be upset if I didn’t get anything. We were on a flight from Dallas to Houston which doesn’t leave much time for drinks anyway. There was something in the weather that made them decide not to do the drink service. I was upset but I have heard about turbulence since then and now I understand. You don’t want flight attendants, drinks and the cart to be flying around the airplane. Turbulence wasn’t a factor here however.
As a Pilot with 40 years service, I am curious which particular flight time rule they feel was infringed? Allowing for reporting hyperbole and “big picture stuff,” if the flight was legal to dispatch with its complement of passengers, what “rest” requirement prevented a normal service?
A company with a history of over-empowered senior cabin crew and an under-empowered command structure? Sadly!
and another thing…..! For decades they have developed this very annoying habit of publicly (over the P.A) praising each other for “all of (their) hard work!” Why? I mean by all means do that on the crew bus or in the crew room where it should be appreciated, but do they truly have any idea how patronising and cringeworthy it actually is? It is a job. There is a lot of completion to do it, and they know what is required of them. There can be days when it can be unusually demanding, but, it is still a job!
Passengers don’t get breakfast because the crew were resting? You gotta love the Willie Walsh legacy.
The period when BA had gthe best service was when the union layabouts were on strike. They ‘wet-leased’ Oatar jets crewed by Qatar crews. It was unbelievably good!
So BA admit that their Business Class cabin is not a good place to rest! And then we have the entitled attitude of the crew who seem to disdain serving the people who pay their handsome salaries. All in all a very good reason for me to continue my 30+ year of avoiding British Noway’s.
Lazy trash being lazy trash. And not providing the product paid for in advance – sue.
They didn’t get breakfast but I’m sure they all paid enormous fuel surcharge fees
British Airways is extremely third-world.
The service is non-existent.
Their Twitter team replies to messages after 3-4 days whereas American Airlines, a much larger airline, responds usually within half an hour.
Of course they were extorted for fuel fees and such. BA are a bunch of thieves and lazy fascist sky waitresses.
Terrible, how did everyone survive
Andrew, your opinion is irrelevant. Services paid for were not delivered. Shut up, troll.