British Airways has just made yet another unpopular announcement – the airline is eliminating hot breakfasts in its Club Europe business class cabin on many short-haul routes, and the reason is so that cabin crew have more time to interact with the passengers.
Perhaps understandably, the announcement has not gone down well with frequent flyers, with some likening the latest cost-cutting measure as a kin to ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and others blasting BA’s management as ‘boneheaded.’
British Airways will now serve fruit and yogurt
While British Airways has yet to formally and publicly announce the changes to its Club Europe breakfast service, internal documents were quickly leaked on the popular frequent flyer online forum Flyer Talk and have since been verified by PYOK.
Traditionally, British Airways has served at least two choices of hot breakfast, as well as a third cold plate option in its Club Europe cabin on the vast majority of short-haul flights.
Only a very few routes get a more express breakfast option in the form of a hot bacon sandwich, but that is all set to change in the New Year.
From January 7, 2026, hot breakfasts will be no more on eight routes between London Heathrow and Amsterdam (AMS), Belfast (BHD), Brussels (BRU), Paris (CDG), Dublin (DUB), Jersey (JER), Manchester (MAN), and Newcastle (NEW).
Instead, passengers will now receive a one-size-fits-all fruit plate, accompanied by a small yogurt, and a warm breakfast pastry like a croissant, pain au choclate or pain au raisin.
British Airways told staffers that the decision had been made so that cabin crew had more time to engage with passengers.
BA is losing its top customer executive in March 2026
The change comes little more than a week after British Airways announced that it was losing its Chief Customer Officer after less than four years in the role.
Despite a series of scandals over the food and drink that British Airways offers premium passengers, chief executive Sean Doyle heaped praise on Calum Laming for his work developing the airline’s menus over the last few years.
Changes follow a short trial in September 2025
The Club Europe breakfast changes follow a short-lived trial that took place in September 2025 on flights between London Heathrow and Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
Despite receiving what some passengers described as “robust” feedback over the trial, British Airways seems to have come to the conclusion that the trial was a resounding success and is pushing ahead with implementation.
In fact, it appears that British Airways has decided to move forward with its new Club Europe breakfast option as a way to solve a problem of its own making.
Supersized cabins are to blame for shrinking meals
Back in June, Doyle boasted that Club Europe was “more popular than ever,” and the airline has been trying to make the very most of this demand by maxing out its Club Europe cabins.
Unlike U.S. mainline carriers, most airlines in Europe don’t have dedicated First Class seats and instead use regular Economy seats with the center seat blocked off and a flexible cabin divider that can be moved based on demand.
British Airways is extending the size of its Club Europe as far as possible, pushing the flexible curtain further towards the back of the plane to meet the demand. That means that cabin crew have more passengers to serve in Club Europe than ever before.
In some cases, cabin crew have complained they simply don’t have enough time to serve up to 56 Club Europe passengers with an effective service time of less than 20 minutes.
Whether this is a legitimate excuse is open to debate: In the U.S., you might get a far more comfortable seat but next to no service on a flight of this length. But passengers say cabin crew always used to manage to serve a hot breakfast to everyone, so what’s really changed?
Other unpopular changes BA has made in the last 12 months
Perhaps one of the biggest issues with this latest announcement is that it follows another infamous cutback, which was summed up in one word: Brunchgate.
In October 2024, British Airways introduced a new brunch service on long-haul flights in its Club World business class cabin. Rather than serving a three-course lunch menu, BA tried to get away with offering cheaper breakfast offerings on long-haul departures up to 11:30 am.
The problem, of course, is that by the time these flights were in the air and service had commenced, it was very much lunchtime, and that’s exactly the food that passengers were expecting.
After being widely criticized, the brunch menu was ditched in early 2025.
