Remember when flying was fun?

You didn’t do it often of course but when you did you might actually enjoy it. And when you were off on holiday that first drink once you were airborne somehow signalled the start of your vacation proper.

But not any more because along came the budget airlines and mass travel which filled airports and generated queues. At the same time security risks increased and that gave you more and longer queues to stand in. And finally governments cut back on immigration human resources and ‘invested’ in epassport gates which often don’t work. It’s not much fun you think but at least you can get a drink on a plane.

Fair does easyJet, Ryanair et al do serve drinks. After all they see it as a way of increasing revenue. Sadly British Airways seem to have forgotten the days when they happily served drinks and apparently aren’t worried about delivering meaningful inflight service even though they might make money out of it.

We flew to Turin with BA earlier this month. Flights were generally OK, albeit an hour or so late in both directions, and the epassport gates worked well both at Gatwick and in Turin.

We flew out on BA2578 early evening. Just the time to sit back and relax and enjoy that G&T which would mean that our holiday was firmly underway. We were airborne at 1840.

But then we had to wait for the service trolley to get to us. There were maybe half a dozen rows in the front served by three cabin crew. Back where we were, in row 15, we waited for the trolley to be pushed by the other two cabin crew to reach us when we were offered the princely choice of still or sparkling water and given a 10g pretzel. I kid you not. Check out the photo above.

Some time later our two cabin crew then came to collect our rubbish and then one of them starts to take orders for drinks. It’s an incredibly slow process as she takes the order then gets payment before walking back to make up the order and deliver it back to the traveller. Fortunately not many people seemed interested so she gets to me at 1950 as we’re over the Alps and starting our descent. I order and pay and wait … and get my drinks just as the captain is telling us all to fasten our seatbelts etc. I keep the drinks for later. I’ve still got them.

Interestingly our flight was operated by BA Euroflyer, a wholly owned subsidiary of British Airways. That meant that it looked like BA, the livery was pretty good but it wasn’t actually BA. That’s why the Business Class seating at the front was just the same as all the rest with no screen between it an Economy. I also thought maybe that’s why the service wasn’t so stellar.

On the way back it was proper BA so I was full of hope and especially so because I could order from my seat using the plane’s local wifi network. Check out the photo.

This time we were airborne at 2105 and I got my water and pretzel at 2145. I mentioned my order to the steward who said he’d check ‘but it’s a short flight’. He’s back shortly afterwards and seemed relieved to be able to confirm that it’s a short flight and that he couldn’t find my order in the system so I wouldn’t get my drink. But in compensation I could have another 10g pretzel. All rather pathetic and the body language simply said ‘we don’t care’.

I made the mistake of doing lots of short haul flights in Asia in the 70s and then experiencing the SAS service revolution in the 80s. You always got drinks on short haul flights and generally they were free. But not these days with British Airways. It’s really rather sad and it’s taken away what might just have made short flights pleasurable in these days of congested airports, security checks and malfunctioning epassport gates.