British Airways failed to cater a transatlantic flight from the Caribbean to London on Monday. While they were on the ground in Nassau, they picked up KFC from the airport. Each passenger in economy and in business class received one chicken leg apiece from a bucket.
Reportedly meals for the flight failed to get refrigerated, which is presumably an issue with the caterer. And so passengers were pretty hungry, the finger lickin’ good nature of BA’s MacGuyvered substitute notwithstanding.
@British_Airways just landed @HeathrowAirport after a 12.5 hour flight BA252 from Turks and Caicos with no catering! BA had to serve @kfc at Nassau giving some lucky passengers 1 piece of chicken. The container with the plane catering wasn’t chilled so all thrown away!! pic.twitter.com/U5IcBD2hRy
— Andrew Bailey (@aktivandrew) July 24, 2023
British Airways flies London Heathrow to Nassau, Bahamas and back every day. Twice a week that flight continues on from Nassau to Providenciales, Turks and Caicos. All-in, travel from Turks to London takes about 12 hours:
- It’s an hour and a half from Turks and Caicos to Nassua.
- Then an hour forty five minutes on the ground in Nassau
- Before an eight hour thirty minute flight to London.
The KFC solution was fairly ingenious, actually. Catering an aircraft on the fly from inside the terminal isn’t easy. I’ve actually had to do this myself. On a frequent flyer charter trip a decade ago with American Airlines (the ‘oneworld MegaDO’) the airline had highlighted its then-new international business class meal service, providing it to everyone on the aircraft. That service simply took too long flying Dallas to Seattle, when everyone wanted to be up in the aisles. So we had catering removed from the aircraft before our Seattle to Los Angeles flight.
Everyone was given a selection of chips and other snacks in the gate area to bring on board before the flight. The galley was stocked with extra booze instead of food. But then we faced a mechanical delay, and drank all the booze. American raided the galleys of nearby aircraft for us, and the station manager sent someone to a liquor store. But we had passengers drinking with no food. And the delay stretched on. The head of the trip organized personal pizzas for first class and I had to cater economy. Restaurants were closing. A Chinese place was still opened but that seemed like a… bad idea.
So slipping cash to the workers of a bagel/sandwich shop that was due to close, we managed to get sandwiches and salads for everyone. It all went something like Woody Allen feeding the revolutionary army in Bananas.
Ultimately airports in the Caribbean do not offer a lot of options for catering widebody aircraft on the fly. BA likely did the best they could under the circumstances. It’s unfortunate that passengers were probably pretty hungry by the time they landed at Heathrow.
Where the airline clearly could have done better is in setting expectations for service recovery. Several passengers were apparently told they’d receive compensation, but did not. The airline should have sent messages to each passenger while they were enroute.
(HT: One Mile at a Time)
I have to laugh. Years ago, as a NY-based consultant, I had a client based in Memphis, where I regularly traveled each week for 9 months. In those days, Northwest was still alive. One Thursday evening I boarded the plane for my flight home, sitting in a first class seat of DC-9 and noticed a DC-10 out the window that was destined to Amsterdam. We pushed back, took off and the first class flight attendant said that we had a treat that night! The business/first class food carts for the AMS flight were mistakenly loaded on to our DC-9, apparently also with the liquor. We ate and drank international provisioning and barely finished before LGA final. We were actually hoping that we could circle so we could digest our dessert course. I could only imagine the revolt on the MEM-AMS flight that evening in the front of the plane. That was one of my best domestic flight experiences. Shockingly it was on NW.
TBH, KFC beats many food options on todays airlines. They just should have picked up a few more buckets
Isn’t this the 2nd screw-up with meals on a BA flight in the past week or so? Is BA trying to set some kind of precedent in catering?
Straight out of the comedy Soul Plane featuring Snoop.
https://youtu.be/pr8pqIPS4Nc
Go to 1:35 in the clip. At least they served Popeyes with up to 2 pieces.
The passengers should have received meal vouchers on the airplane so that they could have used them when they got off. The snacks were probably all gone, too. At least there were no reports of food poisoning. Since the crew knew that they needed to get some food for the passengers, were the passengers alerted to buy a meal before boarding in Nassau?
I received meal vouchers in MSP one time when the flight was canceled but all shops were closed so I used them at my destination of BUF the next morning. KFC chicken is better than a lot of food that airlines serve except for the Asian ones I take across the Pacific. I almost always have some food with me on long flights.
For economy this was probably an upgrade
Finger licking good might be a upgrade from business or first as well from what Ive experienced
Heated shoe leather beautifully prepared & presented typically
They have to justify those nuisance fees somehow
Might be a good idea to tuck one or two MRE’s in your personal bag. Just be sure to take anything out that may get used to heat it up, or anything TSA might not like.
Also good idea to have on board if you may wind up overnight at an airport with everything closed.
There’s nothing ingeniousi about this. This is an absolute failure to provide the product bought, and a class action waiting to happen . BA are incompetent scum.
@PDT great story
@Fred Class Action due to a catering failure, that seems abit dramatic. I am sure paxs will survive an 8hr flight with the Cornel and get some points for their inconvenience from BA.
Would you like that Original or Extra Crispy?
Yes the airline was at fault. Did anyone thank the Flight attendants for thinking of you and getting you food?
Idea came straight from the movie Soul Plane!
I was on an AA flight out of Tegucigalpa, Honduras years ago which was short meals and a flight attendant bought a dozen or so Whoppers from Burger King at the airport for service on board. They were the first meals to run out.
I was on that trip and Gary is being modest. He did a fantastic job.
If I was on the BA flight in premium cabin I would have been upset they didn’t buy more food!
This had me ROTFLMAO!
I agree – KFC is probably better than many of the meals I’ve received in biz class and F domestic. The main mistake was not buying 3x more buckets and ordering sides.
We had a similar problem on my last LOS-ATL flight. There was labour action at the LOS caterer so the flight only received meals for biz class. The GAs made an announcement asking biz passengers to let FAs know if they were willing to skip their meals. Many volunteered (not a big deal for me as I follow the CIA jetlag protocol).
Of course no comp offered by DL to anyone.
PDT great story. What’s more shocking is thinking about Memphis to Amsterdam route. Those really were the good old days.
@Michael – thanks!!