BA - Barplus
 

What do you do with the barplus after the flight?, we've just received a container full from lost and found, and some have coffee stains all over them.

Loosing something the size of a barplus is pretty hard, hence the reason for me asking.

The old barplus will soon be out of service, and Barplus II should be kicking in.

On our BACitiExpress flights the barplus goes into a crew overhead locker at the back of the RJ100. There is also a stowage for it in the rear galley. I've never known one to be either missing or covered with coffee stains.

Umm....New bar plus is already on half the aircraft!!! And they all have designated stowages onboard the aircraft so they should never be coming off the aircraft! So where exactly do you find them for lost property? Its a piece of a/c equippment so should not be removed by anyone other than an engineer!

Just out of curiosity, what is a "bar plus?"

A bar plus is the most annoying piece of equipment in the world, which usually doesn't work, and most probably does have coffee stains all over it! Hahaha...It's just what we use to do our inflight duty free sales.

As for bar plus 2, not sure about that cause it's not on short haul yet, but at least it will work, so I won't mind volunteering to do DF's again!

Unfortunatly I hear from the longhaul crews that the new Barplus works no better than the old one. At least the Barplus 1 would show you it didn't work by not turning on at all, the new machine likes to wait until half way through the DF round and then collapse!

Hi everyone, barplus2 is now the responsibility of Gate Gourmet at LHR ,so as long as Gate gourmet are in buisiness......its over to them.So we can ditch our knackered test pods for barplus1
and get on with supplying all your additional requirements pre departure(spares permitting) Keep up the good work.
(Ex crew lhr )

I wonder if barplus has poor servicability because people keep rubbing lemon on the battery terminals or putting them in the oven to make the batteries work? Would people do that to their phones?

same as vermintrude,the barplus machine is kept in the rear o/h locker on the RJ100 and the pod goes in the duty free trolley :)
i know sometimes the pods dont work and ive heard of crew putting the pod in the oven for a while to warm it up and get it to work!!!!

The new bar pluses are quite good. Problem with them is that it takes so long to load up and to close down. Also, on the 777, there are 2 kept in the rear galley and one at the back of First/front of club. This means the DF operators in First and Club have to share and the process of changing the pods over takes a good 5-10 minutes.
If you are lead pod, you can't input the staff numbers early on in the flight for the commission as when you take the pod all that data is wiped. We are lucky having the long flights to put with it, but the short haul guys aren't gonna be too impressed.
Oh, and one more thing, I keep finding u/s bar pluses as people don't switch them off once they are closed down. It's not automaticly switched off when you take the pod out like on the old ones as the pod and battery are seperate.

Well, spare a moment for us franchise lot.... we've been told Bar-Plus 1 is here to stay..... most probably forever - BA want to charge us a fortune for the new ones. Must say am getting quite good at manual bars now.... lol

Bar plus is not to stay, I will or BAAE (British Airways Avionic Engineering) Will not be servicing the Bar plus starting this september.

Bar Plus 2 will not be coming to BAAE as they are under warranty, so we wont be touching them anytime soon.

As for putting these things into the oven, I just received one this morning where the components looked like burnt/bbq'ed chips.

They contain LEAD Acid batteries, so you do the thinking.

OK, maybe the oven thing isn't such a great idea, but the lemon thing works everytime...I mean it's already broken to start off with, so putting some lemon on it won't do it any harm, cause it wasn't working in the first place anyway!!!!!!!!

JB777,

Yes to a large degree I do agree with you!However there are certain things that keep happening to it which are really driving me up the galley wall! When it says to ensure pod and handset are correctly docked or when it just shows the little clock thing for ages and ages without actually doing anything! At least with the old one you knew it was knackered as it would not switch on!!!!

If you think the contacts needs to be cleaned, use alcohol based fluids or any fluids with the most alcohol percentage.

ie. Vodka.

Hahaha! NOOOOOOOOOOOO
Use the electronic wipes we have loaded in the galley, thats what they are there for, they are the correct equipment! Not make do alcohol minis and lemon slices!

But vodka and lemon work every time - AND believe it or not, you're told to do that in training!

Thankyou Carnage I couldnt agree more! The number of barplus machines being offloaded as they have been rendered defective or INOP is daft. Most that I have 'fixed' have been just by wiping over the connectors with a wet finger or damp tissue. Mostly to remove the sticky lemon residue and pips forming a barrier and stopping the connectivity. Slamming the battery in breaks the connectors too. Then it is pretty much beyond all hope.

Again, all this does is build up as a residue on the connectors and eventually will rot them. Please use saliva on a tissue or a slightly damp tissue. Vodka is better than lemon but it means more wastage.

sixmilehighclub, your not the guy in heathrow thats sending me all these barplus products are you? thank god they're stopping in a few weeks time.