@ hartington ... nice, balanced post.
My wife and I travel Club a couple of times a year on holiday to the USA. We can afford to, and we hope for a bit extra for the money we pay - better seating, food and service, and Club Lounge, and priority security and boarding.
To my sadness, the only bit that really happens is the better seating ... the rest, these days, generally doesn't. And I guess that's why I sounding off here. We pay a premium rate for things that don't happen, and I guess the list will be familiar to many of you:
- Priority Security .. only ever experienced that at STN with MaxJet, otherwise LHR doesn't deliver. Nor does IAD, but then that's been under re-building since the 1990s and remains a shambles for Premium pax.
- Lounges ... never done VS, but BA are similar to the ones sold commercially for about £30. Possibly not as good.
- Boarding ... for the first time EVER, on my last trip out of T5, the BA staff were actually trapping the WT pax trying to use fast-track boarding and sending them back to start again. Unlike at IAD, where we were bundled and bounced by [insert race/religion here] family who shoved into the clearly signed queue/line, and then were allowed to get away with it by BA staff.
- Settling Down ... "Would you like a plastic glass of warm water?" In BA Club?
- Service ... "White wine, please." "Excuse me, that's warm ... I'll have a red." In BA Club?
- Meal = average, items missed almost every time we fly. And don't you DARE ask for what's been missed out, like the coffee. My wife is still hoping to get through a flight without being ignored somewhere.
Oh, it goes on, and on, and on. Why do I pay the money? Because, on a 7-8 hour sector, I want some physical comfort. And, as Hartington said, I can actually get off at the end in a fit state to pick up my rental car and drive round the DC Beltway for an hour in a safe state. That for me, is a major factor. Staggering off an aircraft after 8 hours in WT/WT+, spending another hour on Immigration and then car pick-up, is not the ideal scenario for an hour on the Beltway. [Especially today ...
]
And for this rather sub-standard product, I subsidise the folks in WT?
I'm now burning my BA Miles, and wondering what compensation BA will give me if my next flight [due to IA] results in me being given a cardboard snack-box instead of the usual "adequate" service that I've
already paid for.