British Airways has been forced to remind flight attendants not to place food and drink on the floor of the plane after local food safety officials from the council that is responsible for its home base at London Heathrow responded to a complaint from a passenger who was disgusted with the way crew had stored two trays of drinks.
In a now viral post on the social media platform Reddit, a passenger shared a photo of two small trays of what appeared to be glasses of orange juice and water placed on the floor of the cabin behind the back row of seats in the Premium Economy cabin (what British Airways calls World Traveller Plus).
Drinks on the floor during boarding?
by u/Gold-Psychology-5312 in BritishAirways
The photo initially confused commentators who couldn’t work out why the drinks had been placed on the floor. Insiders, however, explained that the trays would have been left on the floor ahead of passengers boarding, meaning that potentially hundreds of passengers walked past the trays with their shoes and feet in close proximity to the glasses.
“This is at the back of PE [Premium Economy] with no galley nearby,” one commentator wrote. “Poor interior design leads to shortcuts by the crew to try and keep customers happy.”
The commentator then added: “It’s an awkward setup for all concerned. No good solutions, although this is definitely not great.”
While this might have been a one-off situation, other people commenting on the post suggested that this practice was more widespread than originally believed. “We had them in this spot last week when we flew to New York and my husband had a hair floating in his glass when we were served them… Completely unsurprising,” one person wrote.
And another person added: “I’ve seen this in real life last year, flying to Mexico City in premium economy.”
While some people suggested the placement wasn’t necessarily unhygienic, one person explained: “I work in cabin maintenance for a different airline, and this is a shocking place to put drinks. There is so much dust and dirt in those areas that it is incredibly unhygienic.”
The photo was enough for one customer to file a complaint with Hillingdon Council.
“This is a major red flag for food hygiene (yes, drinks come under food hygiene) and I raised this with the council’s food health and safety department covering British Airways,” the customer wrote.
“They have come back today and informed that this isn’t acceptable, and BA has acknowledged this isn’t acceptable and will rebrief all crew in the crew service briefings. It is shocking it requires this intervention, but at least it hopefully won’t happen again.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for British Airways told us: “We take reports like this very seriously, and we have reminded crews to always adhere to our high standards.”
It’s no secret that galley space on board modern commercial airliners is at a premium, and that’s definitely the case at British Airways, where the airline optimized the cabin layout on its Airbus A350s so much that analysts were concerned that there wouldn’t be enough galley space for the aircraft to serve longer-range routes.
Ultimately, however, British Airways figured out the details of how to make its service work, even on the airline’s longest routes, with a spokesperson saying at the time that the A350 “has sufficient space to accommodate catering for the duration of any of our flights.”
