Agree, Little Blue;
They could have tailored the product to suit the economy at the time, instead the completely changed it, thus unsettling the punters because they no longer knew what to expect when they came onboard. The New Business Model - NBM (informally known as
Nigel's
Big
Mistake) confused the hell out of everyone when it was first introduced. I was flying on its first day of operation. Someone (obviously upon instruction from an accountant somewhere - 'wonder who that was?'
) decided that all of the bars should be counted before starting the service.-
(sorry, don't ask me why)- of course being bmi it had to be done manually
-(those computer thingies that everybody else uses cost lots of money, you know). That resulted in the aircraft flying its 1hr15 sector plus 20 mins. on the ground at destination while all of the cabin crew diligently counted
everything, as instructed. - the passengers got nowt, nothing, nada.
Even when the requirement to count everything was dropped, they were still so obsessed with saving money that only enough food was loaded to sell to 10% of the booked pax. figure for the day.I know this to be correct; I phoned the catering manager directly to query this apparent oversight & was told it was their stated "policy". I would regularly operate LHR-PMI-LHR booked full -i.e. approx. 300 pax to transport throughout the day, with only 30 hot bits of food to sell for the whole day. Of course by the time we were over Northern France, and the cabin crew were 8 or 9 rows down the aircraft, all of the food had been sold & everyone else had to go without, even the pax. on the return leg, so fixated were they with
saving money rather than generating revenue.
Someone was responsible for that crazy scenario, and I bet they are still in a job. This is the kind of bullsh*t management that the airline has struggled under for the past ten years or so. I really hope the next lot have got their heads screwed on better than the last shower.
skip.rat.