British Airways - BAW > Reviews > BA Experience London-Tokyo Return Trip

Author's product rating:   

Food Quality	Poor
Customer Service	Very unhelpful
Punctuality	Always on time
Space	Terrible
Value for Money	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Cheap Flights (via friend), punctuality
Disadvantages:	Poor food options, Dated interior, poor customer service onboard, entertainment

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

First off i should explain that i am relatively new to long distance air travel, having only flown long haul three times in my life (Virgin to Orlando/NYC and back, BA to Tokyo and back) Therefore i know i won't really be able to gauge the quality of one airline combined with alot of other long distance airlines etc. but i know that BA pale in comparison to Virgin when compared side by side.

I recently flew British Airways from Heathrow to Tokyo and back for the first time in a long haul in Summer 2008.

BA was picked and booked not out of choice it must be said, as i got a significant reduction on the price of Economy tickets through a friend...but as the reduction was so substantial i thought i could last a 12 hour flight in economy class.

I have to say before i got on the flight i didn't really have any high expectations but did expect a certain level of service that i might not expect on smaller airlines for my money.

Everything went swimmingly through online check in to when we boarded the plane.

We got into our extremely cramped 31" pitch seats in economy and sat down to relax for the flight. We took off, relaxed some more for the first few hours going through europe on route to Tokyo. The dinner that was served was average at best but this was by no means the worst part of our trip.

The two contributing factors into BA's downfall in this particular flight were the Dated In-Flight Entertainment system available and the general mood/attitude of the staff. The in flight entertainment kept cutting out on my earphones, and as you can imagine this became a fairly major complaint over a total of 24 hours flying distance to/from Tokyo.

I saw absolutely no smiles whilst aboard from either crews to/from Tokyo, and as the drinks are very few and far between i found myself getting thirsty only to get up and find all the flight attendents having a chat in the galley, i then continued to ask for a drink of which one guy pointed to his right...i didn't know where he meant so picked up a highland spring water carton and caught a funny look from the same guy which i thought was the true definition of BA's customer service...i did get my drink in the end by "binging" a FA to my seat for a cup of water which was done with about as much grace as a crippled gazelle , no "here we are sir" or "glad i could help" just slapped it down on my tray (i was in the aisle) and then returned to talking in the galley.

The 21st Century British Airways must improve if it wishes to keep up with airlines offering great service and affordability such as Lufhansa, Emirates and many more i've heard offer fantastic customer service from there Crew onboard.

If its the only flight to/from where you want to go, or the cheapest by a long mile i could see the point in flying with BA but after the dreadful in-flight experience i experienced on my flights to Tokyo and back i will try the best i can to avoid them (recently booked an Emirates flight to/from Hong Kong instead of going through BA).