I recently had 4 great sectors in F - 1 long haul (JNB-HKG) and 3 short haul (HKG-BKK-SIN-HKG) including 2 where SO and I were the only F pax. (As he remarked: luxury is having your own bathroom on a plane! I decided not to point out to him that the crew use it too.)

But then I had another very disappointing flight on CX255 to LHR. This time the flight was full and I am the first to admit it is probably a tricky service. With the almost 1am departure some pax want to sleep and are likely to wake up early for breakfast, while others will take advantage of the full dinner service. Still, there's 13 hours to do it in...

I was one of the former and asked for an espresso, glass of wine and dessert (more of that later). The coffee arrived without sugar and the wine never arrived. Using the call button produced no visible effect at all. Eventually I lassoed an FA and matters were corrected. When I wanted to change into my sleeper suit I asked the FA to cut open the tie (from my previous l/h flight I knew that force would only tear the stitching but not open the bag). Instead he opted for brute force and duly tore the stitching to no avail before doing what I'd asked in the first place.

Next morning I woke fairly early though by no means the first. In any F cabin I am used to an FA immediately approaching to ask if pax need anything when they see them stirring. Despite the fact that they were moving about the cabin at times none of the crew reacted to my switching my reading light on nor did they approach me when I went to the loo. So I ordered a coffee at the galley.

Later my breakfast order was taken. I ordered scrambled egg and was told that would take 20 minutes (seemed excessive, but ok) and my table would be laid when it was ready. No problem. 30 minutes later I asked if my breakfast is ready. "Did you order breakfast?" was the reply. Mad scurry to get my breakfast table laid and me fed. The FA's were looking shame-faced as they made amends but instead of offering a sincere apology and then being charming and careful, they were slap dash and avoided all eye contact as if they were afraid I might beat them. And I hadn't even raised my voice or so much as grumbled.

All sorts of minor things were forgotten and had to be asked for - toast, the smoothie, sugar. (What is it with this crew and sugar?! SO asked for sugar with his corn flakes and they brought him cubes! ). The final indignity was the cappucino which had a dreadful watery foam and was full of coffee grounds. Yuck! The one I had when I awoke was perfect (although it too was served without sugar or any of those yummy almond biscuits).

I would really rate this crew as very poor. I seemed to spend the whole waking apart of the flight calling for things that had been forgotten and waiting. Once again I have been disappointed in CX's F service - that makes 2 out of 4 l/h flights. (At least this time I knew the trick about using the duvet to cover that dreadful steel bar in the seat join that otherwise digs into your hip.) Are my expectations too high? Am I just unlucky? Or is CX prone to this sort of inconsistency?

Aside: The dinner menu listed "almond cordial with fungus" as a dessert. Certainly piqued my interest, so I enquired as to what that was. "Oh it's delicious" was the informative reply. Anyway, I had it and it certainly was unusual. Like thin almond custard with a great big, well... fungus... floating in it. The fungus reminded me of those you use to culture your own yoghurt and was rubbery and almost tasteless. It was also impossible to cut with a spoon and I had to carefully manouevre the thing into my mouth without splashing the "cordial" all over the place. The whole thing was very bland (sort of invalids' food) but I was pleased at the opportunity to eat something so different. I love it when airlines expand your culinary horizens.

Oh No!!!!!!!!!! Now it's 255 too??

It saddens me to say it, but yes CX does seem to be losing the consistency that it had in First from 2000 (when I first had the pleasure) until perhaps 12-18 months ago. Personally I am writing up my experiences for CX and sending them in every few months because being HK-based and with no plans to move elsewhere I really have no choice so I need to try to help them get back to where they were.

I'd be curious to know the background of the crew you had. I have to say that I think there are two key factors in the decreasing consistency (and hence average quality):

1) The rushing in of the LHR base and crewing whole aircraft from it. This means that you get crew in the F cabin with only a few weeks on CX and many of them simply don't get what the CX F experience is supposed to be like. Previously, F would only be crewed by people with several years experience in CX.

2) In Asia CX now only recruits HK Permanent Residents for cabin crew. In my view this is a HUGE mistake. It is absolutely clear to me that a large proportion (probably the majority) of the really good F crews that I have had the pleasure of being served by over the years were from places other than HK. Most of the Japanese were superb, as were many Filipinos, Indians, Singaporeans and others. I'm not saying that HK Chinese can't do a great job - many of them do, but somehow, particularly when you have a team which is entirely HK Chinese (which is more and more common these days) the whole experience is just missing something. I really don't know how this could be fixed: I understand that the decision was driven to some extent by a tightening of Immigration rules in Hong Kong, making it hard for CX to justify recruiting non-HK Chinese and basing them in HK, although for some reason they don't seem to have the same problem with pilots. Maybe we should be writing to the Immigration Department as well as CX?

Regrattably I now seriously consider BA and QF on the London run when possible (schedule- & price-wise) - if you'd told me 3 or 4 years ago that I'd be doing that I'd have said you were mad.

I fear it is both the 744 rotations now. So we have to choose - decent cabin (744) or much better chance of a decent crew (Airbus).

Or BA/QF of course - anyone got recent QF F experience HKG-LHR?

Yep. Post #2 pretty much sums the situation up.

For me, it is not so much the operating aircraft but the schedule, previously even after 251 became LHR crewed 255 was still an option.

Now I don't have a choice anymore. But BA is definitely becoming quite competitive price-wise. Right now, if you have a last minute trip to LHR BA in F (A - which is always there even at the last minute) is actually cheaper than CX in J and the same as CX in C. And BA F cabins on this route are comparatively lightly loaded as well - all the badmouthing of the product has definitely taken its toll over the years,

But it is primarily just this one route HKG-LHR that has a problem with F service. Sometimes a trans-pacific flight will have shoddy service (maybe 5% chance) ... it is a bit like the YVR base, that too had teething problems but now the YVR based crews are some of the best around. So there is hope that as staff gain experience and learn to work more effectively and efficiently the service will improve. BTW the shoddy CX service is about the same as the average QF service (and I say this as someone who loves QF dearly). Rather funny to be considering QF as a way to improve cabin service (QF staff are highly variable, often cheeky and entertaining but not as reliable as on BA or CX).

Wasn't this just a reaction to the SARS induced recession? IME HK has started to loosen up on immigration again in the last year since the economy is booming. (For example they are allowing people on dependant visas to seek employment again - a right which was removed during the post SARS recession).

I think it was earlier than that - it's maybe 10 years now since CX recruited outside HK. When did you last see a non-HK "standard" flight attendant? Regrettably pretty well all the remaining non-HK cabin crew are at least pursers now.

^ I really enjoy flying with the YVR-based crews, and since there are fewer of them, it is more common to meet crews with whom you have flown before, which is usually a treat.

Why does it matter if you have flown with them before?

I have found that when you meet crew with whom you have flown before, they usually go out of their way to look after you, and it can make for a fantastic experience. Last week I flew from LHR to HKG with a crew member I had flown with from HKG to NYC a couple of weeks before, and before she came to say hello she had already put food aside that she thought I would enjoy based on what I had eaten on my earlier flight. It certainly wasn't necessary to do that, and I am sure they had more than enough food on board, but it is demonstrative of the effort made. When flying with a YVR crew more often than not I will have flown with at least one of the crew members before, and they seem to really appreciate it and make more of an effort than normal. It matters that I have flown with them before only to the extent that it can make a good experience even better.

I'm not astute enough to know the ethnic origins of the staff. I can say with certainty that the purser was Japanese. She greeted us all in F mentioning specifically that she was from Japan. Everything she did seemed very tentative somehow including the cabin announcements - didn't inpspire much confidence. The rest of the F crew were all of Asian descent but I have no idea where they are based. Idly chatting to one as we disembarked (we waited half an hour for BAA to get its airbridge working and then only one leg functioned) I asked when he was flying again. He said they would only fly in 3 days time. Seems a long layover, so maybe they are LHR based.

Ironically I would have booked BA (I need some qualifying flights and the tier miles help too) but I was afraid of becoming stranded with the strike. Even when it was clear that the strike would be several days later I stuck with CX because my previous flights had been so great.

It seems to me that you are unlucky. CX is much less inconsistent in my opinion than, say, BA, although I consider it less consistent than SQ. To have poor service on 2/4 longhaul flights is not impressive, but I don't think it is very representative. I can't remember the last time that I had a longhaul flight on CX with service that I considered poor. Even when flying in J between HKG and BOM I have found the service to be generally good.

I have four sectors in J between LHR and HKG in the next three weeks (and the first one is my first sector after requalifying for Diamond, so apparently I have a chance of an upgrade). Two on 744s and two on Airbuses. I will report back in detail.

Well I've done the first two sectors and some interesting things emerged. I got the upgrade on the outbound (bought Y, miles to J, upgrade to F), which was my first sector after requalifying, adding evidence to that theory. So I have to compare a HKG-LHR in a 744 in F with a LHR-based crew, and a LHR-HKG on a 340 in J with a HKG crew.

To be fair, there was nothing dramatically wrong with the F flight with an LHR crew, but it was all very mechanical and unfriendly. And one of the guys (an FP) seemed very nervous and unsure of what he was doing. I had a very long chat with the ISM who is now LHR-based but has 20+ years of CX experience (which I suspects help explain why the flight was done fairly competently - she was doing a pretty good job with the resources available to her). From which some things are clear.

The gweilo ISM out of LHR (mentioned here on a number of occasions previously) has a total of 5.5 years of experience (3 with BA and 2.5 with CX). For a HKG-based CX crew that doesn't even get you to Flight Purser, never mind Senior Purser or ISM. Out of LHR you apparently get the opportunity to move to FP on 1.5 years experience, which means about 60 flights on long haul; SP at 120-150 flights; ISM at about 200 flights. In my view this is utterly ludicrous. There is no way that you can learn enough about people and the situations you may encounter in 200 flights to be a competent ISM. Learning the procedures, systems, etc. is about 30% of the task of delivering the world's best First class service. The rest can't be trained - it can only come with experience; I have, I guess, about 400 CX flights under my belt and I still see new things happening almost every flight.

Unfortunately, apparently, crew management in London sees things differently, and is promoting people willy-nilly, without anyone with any recent inflight experience being in on the promotion interviews. Again, this seems to be a huge mistake by CX management. Surely there are two groups of people who know far better than CX suits who sit in offices about who is good and who is not: us (the people whom they are serving), and the senior crew (ISMs & SPs) who see up close how the crew react to real situations. The number of flights the people who are up for promotion have done is so small that they can't have built up a useful number of customer letters in their files, so the LHR crew management is essentially "running blind" - testing whether people are good at passing interviews rather than being actually any good in the real world.

Fortunately, on the return I had a typically wonderful team in J. I'm fairly sure the SP had more experience than the entire F-team on the way over put together (the 3 members of the F team probably had less than 10 years total experience), and she was supported by at least 3 other FPs and two FAs who were all clearly far more on top of their game than any of the LHR F team. My body was still on HKG time, so I crashed immediately we were off the ground and missed the dinner service. But within moments of me waking up (when most of the rest of the cabin was asleep) there was a hot towel and an offer of whether I would like anything. For the rest of the flight my glass never remained empty for more than a minute or two without a refill being offered, and there was never more than a few minutes between one of the team walking the cabin to see if anyone needed anything. The refreshment (aka breakfast) service was a joy to behold - a team of 5 or 6 FAs giving a wonderfully choreographed service, delivered with a smile, accommodating all sorts of requests without any fuss or delay, and generally doing what CX is (or at least used to be) rightly famous for.

So now, with more evidence of the LHR-crew problem (and a slightly increased understanding of the reason) I have a dilemma - I have another roundtrip booked (in J) with a mix of 744 (where I've snagged 86A) and Airbus. Although I reckon the upgrade chances on the 744 are higher, at the moment I think I'd rather take J with a HKG-based crew than F with an LHR-based one, so I'm sorely tempted to wait an hour and get the Airbus.

By the way, could someone confirm that I'm not going senile and that the salmon & caviar service really is getting smaller and smaller? On the previous occasion I got 3 pieces of salmon, a heaped teaspoon of caviar and one (!) piece of boiled potato. This time I we seemed to be down to two pieces of salmon and a slightly rounded teaspoon of caviar, although I guess in the new scheme of things I should be grateful for 3 pieces of boiled potato. I am reasonably sure that if a couple of years ago if one expressed a fondness for the salmon and caviar it was normal to get at least 4 pieces of salmon and two teaspoons of caviar, no?