6 hours in Club World without Food or Drink!
 

Recently travelled back from Mauritius on BA 2068 in Club World with family, 12hr day service (first time on this flight) departing at 9.05am local time and received a very unusual service and disgraceful F&B allocation. Hopefully my timeline below can make things clear:

• Menu's handed out once onboard with two hot meals listed, breakfast and dinner. Not ideal for a 12 hr flight but ok if spaced correctly plus use of the club kitchen.
• Breakfast was served about 1hr after take off and took approximately 45 mins to complete with accompanying drinks service. Food was adequate and although i received my first option, many in the cabin had no choice, left with the vegetarian option and ate very little.
• I visited the Club kitchen shortly after breakfast to find nothing but 4/5 bags of crisps and drinks available. I was informed by the crew that all other food/snack options had already been taken. There was still 10hrs left of the flight!
• Approx 4hrs into the flight "Dinner" orders were taken. (I thought at the time this was simply the crew being proactive) and not long later just before the 5th hour the "dinner Service started and finished within the hour. 14.05 MRU time and 10.05 UK time, far from what would normally be dinner time(yes yes, i'm a Southerner).
• Leaving 6 hours of the flight left with no scheduled food service and an empty club kitchen.
• During the next 6 hrs, cabin crew were non existent, no additional food was offered, the club kitchen completely empty not one drinks service was provided (the reason soon came clear). I revisited the Galley with about 4hrs remaining requesting a soft drink, only to be told by cabin crew that the dinner service had exhausted all soft drink options apart from a water from large bottles or tonic water! Alcohol was down to spirits and beer
• Both myself and other passengers ended up purchasing chocolate from duty for our family's to consume during this period, BA will certainly be getting the bill for that.

My Questions

Service timeline - i have never experienced or can rationally understand a reason for a timeline like this. Is this normal for this flight or was it an effort for the crew to get their service requirements out the way and extend their rest period?

Failure of service - It is not acceptable for a business class product to offer people 6hrs of flying time without a food or drinks service or either available on demand. This is almost on par with the full flight time of other long haul routes where two meal services are provided. I will certainly be contacting BA for compensation in this regard, but surely this is a complete failure of service, could any further formal compensation be received?

F&B Allocation - My understanding this being a route that F&B is fully restocked at the origin of each leg. How can it be possible that allocations are so low that soft drinks run out half way through the flight and how can the club kitchen allocation be so low as to run out with 10+ hours remaining when it was meant to be the source of food for 6 hours of the flight?

Copy and paste to Customer Relations and demand an explanation. I don't know what the service routine is on a Mauritius but I'd have thought serving you your second and final meal more than six hours from landing sound a little odd. Hope you get something sorted.

Totally unacceptable.

Wow. I’m glad I wasn’t on this flight :(

This makes for very grim reading indeed, and the level of ‘service’ you describe (in a very calm, factual manner, I might add) falls way, way below the standard one can reasonably expect in return for significant money spent on a business class ticket with any airline - let alone one of the largest global carriers.

My own (limited) contact with BA Customer Relations has not provided particularly useful outcomes, but others with more experience of trying to resolve their BA grievances will hopefully provide some constructive advice / guidance.

I think that BA are aware that these long day flights are under catered as I’m seeing posts regarding this on our internal website from cabin crew based at LGW, your feedback will be useful in highlighting this from a customers perspective.
It does seem like these leasure distinctions have there on problems which I think is linked to customers staying in AI resorts with food available 24/7.

CIHY ... thanks for that useful input. Quite a lot of our travel is l/h ex-LGW CW to the Caribbean or Cape Town ... sectors of 9-12 hours. Most of those are night sectors, except for the outbound Caribbeans, so I've usually been asleep. I even manage to alleviate the boredom and feeble IFE by grabbing a few hours sleep on the day sectors! I've not noticed starvation or dehydration so far, but I'll pay more attention over the next couple of months when doing a CPT and a KIN.

The AI dimension is an interesting one. As older people our appetites are modest, but we have seen the horrendous amounts some people eat on the AI holidays we've taken.

Certainly a very sorry tale from the OP, and if it happens to us we will certainly ensure BA are made aware.

It puzzles me that BA needs this feedback in order to see that there is an issue and do something about it. Whoever thought of this concept has clearly no idea. :confused:

Exactly it’s not as if they haven’t received from all areas.

The thing I find most odd is the second meal service completing around half-way into the flight. I don't think this is standard procedure, and can't really understand why the crew would do it?

I'd be tempted to say that's a YMMV statement uncle T. I eat roughly the same on an all inclusive holiday as I do at home. There's a reason my mum calls me the human bin!

We've got a family trip from LGW to LIM in March in CW. Departs at 1350 I hope they have this sorted by then, it doesn't sound a lot of fun . Especially as I asked the TA to switch us from Avianca into Bogata to BA into Lima.

Having travelled a few times back from Mauritius over the years, the service has alternated between breakfast at the start of the flight and then dinner at the end or as the OP had the two meals in the first five hours. The last time I queried what was going on the answer was customer feedback. It seems like BA haven’t worked out what is best.

The last time I flew is was the meals at either end with a drinks run after 5 hours with nuts and crisps. I remember looking at the club kitchen;and seeing nothing so that hasn’t changed.

Is the Club kitchen not meant to be exactly that? The website suggests that it is "an array of indulgent treats and healthy options from our Club Kitchen that you can help yourself to, throughout the flight". That kind of creates an expectation that the treats and healthy options are available 24/7 on board.

Having said that, I have just seen the section on the Elemis Travel Spa fails to mention the important piece of being subject to availability. Once again, the marketing department are writing cheques the accountants will not cash.

If you saw how greedy some people are no amount of snacks would be enough.

A regular route for me and the family. Whilst there has been one positive development for LGW-MRU in terms of the new lounges at LGW S which I've yet to try, just the fact having to schlep to Gatwick and the poor quality of the onboard service typical for this flight (esp on the way back in all cabins from CW right down to Y, unsure if it's down to a sunburnt or hungover crew or usual cost cutting) meant Emirates has deservedly got our cash for this route for the last 3 years now. It's beyond ridiculous there is no substantive CW food (not even a panini or instant noodles) between morning and evening for such a long day flight (bar some crisps chocolates and apples!)