Happy new year, frequent flyers. If you’re accustomed to the front seats of a British Airways cabin, you are quite possibly fuming about the flag carrier’s latest streamlining exercise: replacing the cooked breakfast service with a long-life pastry and fruit salad on eight of its shortest routes.
“The breakfast was something to look forward to, particularly on an early NCL-LHR” carps one member of a frequent flyer forum about Newcastle to Heathrow flights – a route on which the service time is approximately 30 minutes.
Yes, this will hurt some corporate customers on tight connections who timetable their breakfast for mid-air, but most people under the age of 40 are likely thinking, so what?
When you’ve grown up with the convenience of cheap, no-frills flights zipping you across Europe for a song, a full-service fare with a plastic tray of reheated omelette and bacon is anachronistic.
Flying in style is fading into oblivion. At least for most of us.
It has been a slow, but sad demise. Almost a decade ago, BA swapped free meals for economy passengers on short haul flights for a retail menu of M&S sandwiches. Alex Cruz, the airline’s boss at the time, claimed that passengers wanted to choose from a greater range of premium products.
These days if you’re flying from Heathrow, you can upgrade your in-flight experience before you board, according to your taste: take an “Idiot Sandwich” (beef brisket with pickled cucumber, barbecue sauce and crispy onions) from Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food Market, an “in-flight picnic” from Fortnum & Mason or a poached salmon poke bowl from Itsu.
Consumer behaviour changes, but that’s often forced by airline finances. In the first six months of last year, BA reduced its operational costs – which include catering – by almost 10 per cent year on year, though it maintains that removing hot breakfasts on “express” routes is not a cost-cutting exercise.
In fact, the operational “challenges” that BA finds in serving a hot breakfast are part of the broader decline of pleasurable air travel that was accelerated by the dawn of low-cost carriers in the Eighties and Nineties.
Comfort and service have been traded for cheaper fares (though not necessarily at the front of the plane), if you’re prepared not to splash out on anything more than your economy seat.
When Ryanair launched in 1985, introductory fares between Waterford and Gatwick were £99. That’s around £310 in today’s money but at the time was almost half the price of its competitors.
I was born just a few years earlier. The first flight I remember was on Pan Am after visiting family friends in Los Angeles in 1989. It’s etched into my psyche for one reason – it was my birthday, and I was served a cheeseburger and birthday cake, in economy. It could not have been more glamorous, even if people were smoking a few rows behind us. My parents would have forked out the equivalent of around £900pp on the air fare.
Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to fly in premium seats a handful of times, but it’s the nostalgia of economy tray meals that I most fondly recall – curry on Malaysia Airlines, the choice of chicken or beef on “The World’s Favourite Airline” (that was British Airways, by the way) in the Nineties.
Ordering a complimentary cocktail from a Virgin Atlantic bar was a thrill at 30,000ft, but they too are being phased out in favour of more Upper Class “retreat suite” seats over the next couple of years.
My Gen Alpha children, on the other hand, have known only no-frills and can recite Jet2 adverts by rote. On a transatlantic flight last summer, they were unimpressed by the complimentary in-flight catering, leaving most of their economy meals for my husband and I to polish off.
Your next read
square MARK WALLACEThis is Putin’s moment of maximum weakness
square JONN ELLEDGE Who broke Britain?Why are trains so bad in Britain? The answer begins with Ernest Marples
square ALEXANDER DRAGONETTI Are We Ready For War?Britain is getting ready for war – and paying with Ukrainian blood
square JENNIE BONDHarry’s feet-stamping may end a spiteful order. Here’s what Meghan should do
While they found the novelty of a seat-back TV screen appealing, it was for the seat-to-seat battles of tic-tac-toe rather than the limited choice of films that they’d already seen on Netflix.
The lucky few in the posh seats on Gulf carriers such as Emirates and Qatar Airways may feel differently. These airlines are investing in their premium products – the latter treats its QSuite passengers to made-to-order salads of burrata with heirloom tomatoes or freshly rolled sushi, for example.
But for most passengers, flying is about getting from A to B as economically as possible. If you want to make the experience more glamorous, you’ll need to do it yourself.
Hence then, the article about flying has lost its glamour a generation raised on ryanair will never understand was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Flying has lost its glamour. A generation raised on Ryanair will never understand )
Also on site :
- US seizes Russian oil tanker in North Atlantic
- Lanes closed on part of Route 104 westbound in Webster due to crash
- We Finally Paid Off Our Last Piece of Debt. I Didn’t Expect It to Backfire Like This.