BA going Buy on Board refreshments for short haul...

richardw wrote: »

....with M&S

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/british-airways-to-charge-for-inflight-food-and-drink-qa-for-passengers-a7336811.html

I can't think of any M&S food that I buy which tastes worse than free airline food. Sounds like a win to me. Will they cater for special diets?

EDIT: I agree that people who have already booked tickets should get what they paid for. The obvious solution seems to be that they should be given vouchers for the purpose of buying food and drink.

magyar wrote: »

In this instance, it's a clear breach of contract - I've written to Watchdog and Which - will be interesting to see how/if they respond. It's outrageous behavior.

I suspect many others will also be doing the same and as this issue affects so many people, I would imagine their researchers are looking into this as we write.

The insulting 'goodwill gesture' of offering 1000 Avios - whether you have one flight or 100 booked in the affected period - is insulting and just shows the contempt a once great airline has for its customers.

isplumm wrote: »

It will be interesting to see how this goes - I suspect that there will be some clause in their T&Cs that state they can do this.

Mark

They can do it, they've given reasonable notice of variation and offered customers the chance to back out of the contract without penalty.

Except your contract with them doesn't promise food or drink. Your contract promises travel from A to B. Furthermore you are receiving a service, not goods (in the same way distance selling regulations don't apply).

You are genuinely wasting your time (and the time of others), on a complete non-issue.

malkie76 wrote: »

Except your contract with them doesn't promise food or drink. Your contract promises travel from A to B. Furthermore you are receiving a service, not goods (in the same way distance selling regulations don't apply).

You are genuinely wasting your time (and the time of others), on a complete non-issue.

Well, the point about wasting time is rather subjective.

But on the first point, I do disagree. The law says that a contract includes everything that was promised in marketing material. This includes catering. To give an extreme example, their First Class ticket says that you get lounge access, spa treatments, personal concierge service, high quality meals on board, and of course a very good seat up the front of the plane. If they tried to remove any of these items then quite naturally people would expect compensation - in fact EU laws (nothing to do with their Conditions of Carriage) say that if you are downgraded then you are specifically entitled to compensation. So it's clear that the law, not their contract, has ultimate jurisdiction.

I did myself consider your point about it being a 'service' and not 'goods' but again the law would say it doesn't matter what you call something in a contract, if you promise to provide goods, the law on goods applies. Food is definitely 'goods'.

And there is a very simple point here: BA clearly *did* promise something which they're taking away. Perfectly fine for people who have not yet booked. But people who have booked on the basis of a certain level of service should get it.

On any individual basis, the amounts are tiny, but it's clearly wrong that BA will save money by asking people to pay for something which they've already paid for.