Questions and Answers

Dear Lucky,

Love the blog. I had the pleasure of meeting you and Ford in the Virgin bar at the O2 London, before the Adele concert. My wife and I discussed our experience on Garuda Indonesia F, LGW-AMS-CGK-DPS. Our favourite product overall in the sky and on the ground.

I fly a fair amount each year and I do like to assess an airline by how they respond when things go wrong. I once had a (minor) poor experience on SIA Suites (a dead fly in my salad which I did not even notice) and the crew were phenomenal, could not be more apologetic and gave immediate on-board compensation (a cheque for SGD 300), which, to be honest, I felt was over the top!

An experience I had with BA was slightly different. Flight from KBP-LHR, August of this year in Club Europe. Found a piece of plastic hidden in my BA lunch, after eating about half of the chicken. The end result following my complaint to customer service, taking to Twitter, and an email CEO Alex Cruz, was, four months later, an apology, an explanation of what went wrong (it was the supplier’s fault) but no there was compensation. Whilst I do not criticise the customer service personnel for following protocol, I ask myself, ‘should compensation be paid in this instance’? I thought a token Avios contribution would have been a reasonable goodwill gesture, yet I was told by BA that “I’m sorry but the meal is not part of the price of the ticket”, which, while it might technically be true from a legal perspective, frankly shocked me. The lunch/dinner is one of the few differentiating factors when choosing Club Europe over Euro Traveller, and is clearly advertised as a benefit of the service. I am a BAEC Gold card holder yet they still don’t seem to want to keep my custom.

I am keen to hear the thoughts of others on this, please. Am I unrealistic in expecting even a token compensation (I felt sick after seeing that plastic on my plate, the original customer service response was poor), or should I expect nothing as the lunch is a ‘free’ addition to the price of the ticket?

The photograph of the plastic itself is a PA disaster for BA, as it clearly shows the name “British Airways”.