BA Buy on Board
 

Any one on Prune experience the new BA Buy on Board (BoB) experience yet-quite a lot of negativity on some other websites. The part of it that worried me most was that even water has to be paid for unless its 'Tap' water. I have always been v wary of drinking tap water on a plane knowing what can go on inside relatively small water tanks when the tap is fed from there other than free flowing mains

FWIW the water bowsers should have sterilised mains water, tablets are added by the operative, if they can be asked. I have also seen the water tanks after removal and they have sludge at the bottom. I agree, on board 'Tap' water would not be my first choice!

Two questions.

1. How much for a beer? An orange LCC charges £4 for a 330ml (£6.88 a pint equivalent).
2. Do they charge the same on intra-EU as on ex-EU where goods are tax and duty exempt?

Drinks menu | British Airways

1) £4 for a 330ml beer. Same as easyJet.
2) Only one price is listed as far as I can see.

Which airlines do charge a different price for intra or ex EU flights out of interest?

The crews all drink the same tap water. When you consider that the can't eat the same meals but can all drink from the same water it suggests to me that the risk of anything unpleasant making you get sick is fairly small.

I'm curious about how many crew members drink the tap water.... I suspect not many.

Well, every crew member who has a tea or coffee will and any passenger who has a hot drink will too. Water services during ground delays too. If there was any risk (drinking it hot or cold) then I very much doubt it would be offered to anyone given today's litigious society and if there was a health and safety risk, crew would be forbidden from consuming it.

There might be a reason why some carriers cater extra bottled water for their crews...

My airline does carry bottled water for crew. We get a set amount of water bottles with any extra being either passenger water from the bar or potable water. Not all do however. We still get teas and coffees made with potable water. Airlines who use coffee brewers will also use potable water.

I've been drinking it for the best part of a decade and I'm still here.

"Air Asia to KL from BKK ,I had a coffee which was not particulary hot and about 30 mins later I had to dash for the loo,lucky I was in the back row!This continued well after I was on the ground .Conclusion was it was the water as I had only had my normal breakfast (and nothing else)before take off.

On the BA flight yesterday LHR-MAN, the crew made an announcement that they are "excited" about the new buy on board service, but due to being unable to take forms of payment they will not be providing any of services on board, but you can have a glass of tap water if you wanted to, they further say "we have passed this onto to our management, who sends their sincere apologies."

In reality BA have become such a shabby airline, even their own staff looked so embarrassed, you cannot differentiate BA from a low cost, the ticket buy the way cost over £250, not worth it and I wish there was flights with different airlines to LHR from the north.

I'm sure the crew won't be quite so embarrassed when their commission slips get delivered.

I was under the impression that the majority of airlines provide bottled water for their crews?

I personally wouldn't drink the potable water unless I had to, I regularly see the water quality test reports and you'd be surprised the amount of 'fails' seen on these reports. Often from UK airports :cool:

They do indeed. However there's no way to heat the bottled water in many cabin setups. Therefore when it comes to hot drinks, we the crew are all drinking potable water.

I'd thought that if they were going cashless, they'd at least have the manual backups for card payments. It's basically carbon paper imprints of the cards. It's old school, but it works. I don't think it's acceptable for a long flight to say 'our management send their apologies, and we have cups of free tap water available'.

I do find it amusing. Once upon a time BA crew and pax would look down on the likes of easyJet and their passengers. Fast forward to 2017, and they're easyJet Heathrow. Nothing more.

Potable water for tea/coffee is boiled/filtered though?

And hot meals are nuked to death. We still can't eat the same meal. Some of the drinks we get served are barely warm, nevertheless mind hot. If there was any risk in potable water then I'm sure they would restrict crews in consuming it. They don't usually restrict passengers from consuming it neither. Airlines are very cautious as to where they pick up water in order to minimise risk. Many a time during ground delays our crews have distributed cups of tap water to an entire cabin. I've never heard of anyone getting sick from it.

I understand that potable water cannot be uplifted from certain locations for obvious reasons, but I've seen a lot of worrying reports regarding water bowsers and the quality of their tanks in the UK.

I stand to be corrected here, but I believe Ryanair potable water isn't for consumption?

Ryanair have redefined the meaning of many previously understood terms, so why should "potable" be immune ? :O

Previous thread of relevance:

http://www.pprune.org/passengers-slf...ement-not.html

I do realise that most airlines would take some care over potable water and of course if it isnt actually boiled it should be close to 100 C for tea or coffee. Most UK tap water isn tvery nice to taste anyway though and sticking in a tank ona plabne isnt going to make it taste nicer.

I understand why BA are moving to BoB but extending it to bottled water is a step too far, It makes them look cheap and nasty and is completely at odds with their 'premium image' they like to portray

At 8,000 feet the boiling temperature of water is 91.6C. And it won't stay that hot for long.

I personally would never drink potable water, unless it's a cup of tea. We get provided with bottled water, however after seeing pictures of the inside of aircraft water tanks I keep the tea down to a minimum. Quite a lot of countries including quite a lot of European countries, we are prohibited, in BA, to upload potable water.

The BoB sounds like its going quite well, with rumours from crews that it's being sold out. It's a shame it has happened, but the public want cheap flights and they are price sensitive. It's all about price on short haul. Expedia and other travel sites often list flights on the headline price, and as a result BA don't get listed anywhere near the top, because they used to have everything included. A £7 price difference meant Jo Public went for LCC. The reality is that several free G&Ts later, they'd forgotten that they've saved a considerable amount of money on their way to Malaga.

BA reduced the offering to compete to the extent is was ridiculous and hardly anyone ate it anyway. If the public select the airline on price, you might as well compete on price.