Consistency
I have resisted commenting until now… but I have to rise to the bait offered by the conversations about CC, and service, and how this can differ…
I am old enough to have flown with, and remember, the BA before Marshall… and the one thing that I recall was the inconsistency of the service. It varied from the very good to the dire. Stand up the European Fleet CC who worked BRU-MAN on a BAC1-11 on the Thursday evening flight before the August Bank Holiday 1982. See? That experience (O.K., made the better by the fact that we were going ‘home’ after an overseas assignment), is burnt on my brain. It was a wonderful return to Britain, at least an hour before we got there. And despite the short sector, and the full aeroplane, nothing was too much trouble. AND we were travelling with a 9 month old youngster.
What “Putting People First” did was to bring to the airline, and particularly the cabin service, a level of consistency that made BA, together with the original Club product, stand out from the Competitors. It was good service, one was made to feel welcome, one was made to feel special. And each time that it looked as if the Competitors were about to come up with an offering that would seriously compete, BA would raise their game and stay ahead.
So, I flew regularly with BA, around the world, but mostly within Europe, to the Far East, and to South Africa, and managed to pass go and collect an Executive Club Gold Card which I held for many years.
What I noticed in the last few years before I retired was that the old inconsistencies had crept back in. Sometimes when I flew, I was made to feel very special. Other times, I was just SLF, the cabin service was performed with very little grace, and, as others have already commented, there seemed to be an almost unseemly rush to get it over with so that the lights could be dimmed and the maximum number of CC could disappear and get their heads down in the Wendy House.
There are Competitors out there. I note with interest the comments about Virgin, but to me the real threat comes not from other North West European airlines, but those of the emerging economies. I have flown a lot with SQ (yes, I had a Gold Card with them). There is no doubt that SQ service is totally consistent… even to the extent that one knows at which rows the welcoming CC will be standing as one boards. Sometimes, it is so ‘process driven’ that it can feel a little sterile. I have flown less with people like Malaysian, Korean, and Emirates; whilst their cabins might not have quite the comfort of the BA offering, the service is good, and the CC are attentive.
But I think that, for many people, and not just for Brits, ‘coming to Britain’, even when one is fourteen hours away from LHR or LGW, can be a very calming experience. Clarkson mentioned it in his piece in last Sunday’s Telegraph. I would not have expressed it quite like that, and I am not sure quite what Third World hell holes he has lived and worked in, but I have empathy with the sentiment.
I think that there is one good thing that might come out of this strike, and all the agonising that honest, decent people have been going through as to whether to support their Company, in which they obviously still feel great pride, at the risk of being ostracised by some of their colleagues, or whether to support their Union, which up to now has been their main source of information, however flawed. That good thing could be that BA take the management of staff working remotely, and over whom there can be relatively little direct supervision ‘on the day of the race’, far more seriously, and provide the clear leadership that will allow people to do things that they didn’t know were possible. That would allow BA again to become a leader in its industry.
I see from the comments from some of the people who have been flying over the last two periods of the strikes that the absence of grumpy CC has allowed them to rediscover some of their old feelings about their job and how they go about it. If those same people, with the active support of their managers, can catalyse some of the magic back into BA service, yes, in the cabin, but also right across the customer experience, then the airline will become Great British Airways. And I, and many others, would rejoice.
Good luck to you all.