A revolt by passengers and cabin crew has forced British Airways to drop its latest cost-cutting initiative after the airline attempted to remove water bottles from passenger meal trays on long-haul flights.
British Airways conducted a two-week trial in June on three premium international routes between London Heathrow and Boston, Miami, and Los Angeles, in which the airline removed water bottles in its World Traveller (Economy) and World Traveller Plus (Premium Economy) cabins.
The justification for the trial was to reduce the mountains of single-use plastic that the airline gets through every single day. Passengers and cabin crew, however, accused the penny-pinching carrier of attempting to cut costs under the cover of sustainability.
Rather than getting a small plastic water bottle on their meal tray, passengers had to request water in small paper cups, leaving customers incredulous.
Angry passengers pointed out that plastic water bottles are easily recyclable, while more sustainable options like boxed or canned water could also have been trialled.
After being inundated with complaints about the trial, however, British Airways has decided to suspend the initiative indefinitely. British Airways is not believed to be investigating other alternatives, like recyclable boxed water.
“I’ve become well used to the bare minimum from BA, but this is a new low even for them,” one passenger who experienced the trial wrote in a post on the frequent flyer website, Flyer Talk.
“Obviously a cost-saving exercise under the guise of saving the polar bears,” the post continued.
British Airways is expected to push ahead with a plan to replace plastic cups with a paper alternative, although finding a product that doesn’t disintegrate when there is ice in the cup has proved harder than originally thought.
Last October, British Airways faced another outcry from fed-up passengers after the airline cut the amount of food on offer in its Club World long-haul Business Class as part of another cost-cutting move.
The scandal was dubbed Brunchgate because rather than serving a hot lunch, British Airways decided it would only serve breakfast on all long-haul flights departing between 8:30 a.m. and 11:29 a.m.
The issue is that by the time a plane gets in the air and the in-flight service gets underway, it would be lunchtime, and passengers were looking forward to a more substantial meal, instead of waffles.
At the same time, British Airways slashed the amount of food offered to Business Class passengers on late-night departures – even on some of the longest routes in the airline’s network, including Hong Kong and Cape Town.
British Airways claimed the changes had only been made on the back of passenger feedback, but within months, the airline rolled back all of the cutbacks. In an internal memo, the airline told staffers that passenger needs had rapidly changed in several months, prompting the reversal.
Do you think British Airways was right to remove water bottles from passenger meal trays? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below…
BA can’t recycle those bottles. Or cans.
They rarely could recycle on long haul, and, since leaving the EU can’t do soon short haul either.
It’s all classified as international catering waste and has to be incinerated.
What tends to make passengers switch airlines is paying a Full Service Carrier price and getting a Low Cost Carrier product.