sn26567 wrote: ↑02 Feb 2020, 23:28
Two disappointing reports on long-haul trips onboard Brussels Airlines A330s, one in Economy and the other in Premium Economy. It seems that Economy really means savings on everything: quality of service, IFE, amenities and quality of food and drinks. Reboot?
SN should take better care of the travel class in which the majority of passengers are flying. There may be nice reports about the business class, but that concerns only some happy few.
Strange that some of you prefer the "good old A333" of Air Canada next to their brand new 787, but seem to quickly negative when it comes to Brussels Airlines. Not sure how an old/used looking cabin of an Air Canada can be better than a refurbished SN A330 to be honest...
But that's exactly what he said that the cabin was good.
The problems were different!
The problems are indeed different.
I worked 10+ years at SN (started at the time of SNBA and recently left) and I think that the problem is two-fold:
* quality in delivery: from cabin maintenance all the way to airport experience and service on board, there's simply NO consistency. When travelling on duty or for leisure, I would always check the crew composition before the flight and could predict exactly what was going to happen on board. Enforcing standards has always been a HUGE problem at SN, but people seem to think "well, we're Belgians, so we're pragmatic"...... well, so are the customers.
* cost-cutting and lack of customer-centricity: "we go the extra smile", "we want to become the most personal airline blablabla" are what SN tells the external audience. Inside, it's a totally different story. "People are concerned about on-time performance. Great! Let's take this as an excuse to cut all the rest (while staying one of the worst in Europe for on-time performance)". SN wants to be everything, and, as someone at LH told me a few years ago "you want to be Air Berlin and pretend that you're going to succeed where everyone else has failed. have fun!".
This is precisely what everyone at SN knows deep inside that is being pictured in these reports. Nobody dares to say it, internally, just because they're afraid of being referred to as "living in the past". For sure, flying with SN is part of the past for me though I wish them the best of luck in a very challenging environment, where differentiation is key.
sean1982 wrote: ↑03 Feb 2020, 14:47
1 cabin crew member for a whole economy class because the other crew is on break?? on a 6 hour flight? Who came up with these service standards??
It seems unbelievable and, if true, unacceptable, even if you're not totally satisfied with your salary and/or working conditions. Pax deserve a minimum of respect and care.
sean1982 wrote: ↑03 Feb 2020, 14:47
1 cabin crew member for a whole economy class because the other crew is on break?? on a 6 hour flight? Who came up with these service standards??
It seems unbelievable and, if true, unacceptable, even if you're not totally satisfied with your salary and/or working conditions. Pax deserve a minimum of respect and care.
With British Airways, crew rest (as in organised in bunks or rest seats) is only on flights over 8 hours and even then it would be on the pursers discretion. If the flight was too busy it didnt happen. Legal required rest only comes in play after a flight duty period of 11 minimum to extend the maximum FDP. A break on a 6 hours wide body flight is really not done ....
sn26567 wrote: ↑02 Feb 2020, 23:28
Two disappointing reports on long-haul trips onboard Brussels Airlines A330s, one in Economy and the other in Premium Economy. It seems that Economy really means savings on everything: quality of service, IFE, amenities and quality of food and drinks. Reboot?
SN should take better care of the travel class in which the majority of passengers are flying. There may be nice reports about the business class, but that concerns only some happy few.
Let me copy/paste some of the stuff that the above Ben Smithson (The Points Guy) has posted:
.
Then came the lunch service. Oh my days. This was the longest meal service of any flight I have taken. To give you some context, the seatbelt sign was turned on a few times during the service because of mild turbulence, which I recognize can interrupt the service flow. However, only at one period did the pilot actually instruct the crew to halt the service and take their seats (for about 10 minutes or so). The rest of the time, the crew couldn’t seem to make up their mind about whether they should continue the meal service or not. I was in the large rear economy cabin, and most of the trolleys were kept at the rear of the aircraft, so they had to be wheeled past me up the aisle to start service. There was a drinks trolley, a food trolley and then a rubbish trolley. I gave up counting but would guess these trolleys wheeled past me at least 25 times during this marathon meal service. The crew wheeled a trolley up an aisle, served a few people then wheeled it all the way to the back. Then it would appear again about 10 minutes later, when exactly the same thing would happen. Repeat again and again.
Here’s an approximate breakdown of the first four or so hours of the flight:
1 p.m.: Takeoff.
1:30 p.m.: Seatbelt sign off, trolleys start appearing.
2 p.m.: Drinks served with snacks.
3 p.m.: Lunch tray served with second round of drinks.
3:30 p.m.: I completely finish my meal and wait patiently for the crew to collect the tray. The completely full cabin and never-ending procession of trolleys up and down the narrow aisles means it’s impossible to use the bathroom.
4 p.m.: Trays still not collected, and the crew have given up on serving tea or coffee. Passengers are increasingly frustrated at being imprisoned at their seats by dirty meal trays and start stuffing them elsewhere, like in the aisles and around their feet. When a crew member asks a neighbor not to block the aisle with his food tray, the passenger curtly responds, “Well, why don’t you collect them, then?”.
4:30 p.m.: It’s now dark outside. Unable to wait any longer, I maneuver myself out of my seat to use the bathroom, placing my tray back on the tray table. The trolley parade continues, with crew yet again pushing trolleys up the aisle, so I’m hopeful my tray will finally be collected.
4:40 p.m.: I return to my seat to find my dirty tray was still on my tray table. It’s the same all around me. Passengers are now yelling out in the cabin: “Where are the crew?” “Why are our trays still here?” “Why is this taking so long?” Flight attendants ignore call buttons.
5:15 p.m.: Trays are finally collected, and lunch service is finally concluded.
Failing BA? Well, the above is a report from London-Dubai, in Economy, in a brand new Airbus A350. Indeed: the quote above is not a review on Brussels Airlines, but on British Airways. Posted by the same guy, one month ago. https://thepointsguy.co.uk/reviews/brit ... 0-economy/
The situation where there is only one F.A in the aft galley is when the duty free sales are in progress or the inventory and sales are being completed in the front / mid galley by the rest of the F.A. That might take up to 3 (!!) hours on a december or july Kinshasa flight !!
How would 7 F.As rest at the same time when there's only 2 or 4 crew rest seats available ?? On most of day flights it's only 2 seats. That's for facts.
On a more emotional note, of course everything deteriorated at SN like many others carriers. Have you ever flown the sh--y economy product of LH ?
SN's crew had to deliver many efforts, they have give in for everything, some of them fly 6 long hauls per month + medium haul in between. Everyone is exhausted. What do passenger expect ?? They pay peanuts they get peanuts treatment. Moreover, the situation described is up to the stubbornness of the inflight service dept at SN which wants to keep the duty free sales which is a huge loss of time, attention consuming and useless from a strict product quality point of view. But it brings a lot of "ancillary revenue", and African pax like to shop while being seated rather than buying in an airport. I wouldn't dare telling how much a FA earns as extra a month for these silly in flight sales.
Typical of SN as described above they give "the impression that" with stupid things like "the extra smile" "these little important extras like DF sales"... but their hard product is declining very quickly.
sn26567 wrote: ↑02 Feb 2020, 23:28
Two disappointing reports on long-haul trips onboard Brussels Airlines A330s, one in Economy and the other in Premium Economy. It seems that Economy really means savings on everything: quality of service, IFE, amenities and quality of food and drinks. Reboot?
SN should take better care of the travel class in which the majority of passengers are flying. There may be nice reports about the business class, but that concerns only some happy few.
Let me copy/paste some of the stuff that the above Ben Smithson (The Points Guy) has posted:
.
Then came the lunch service. Oh my days. This was the longest meal service of any flight I have taken. To give you some context, the seatbelt sign was turned on a few times during the service because of mild turbulence, which I recognize can interrupt the service flow. However, only at one period did the pilot actually instruct the crew to halt the service and take their seats (for about 10 minutes or so). The rest of the time, the crew couldn’t seem to make up their mind about whether they should continue the meal service or not. I was in the large rear economy cabin, and most of the trolleys were kept at the rear of the aircraft, so they had to be wheeled past me up the aisle to start service. There was a drinks trolley, a food trolley and then a rubbish trolley. I gave up counting but would guess these trolleys wheeled past me at least 25 times during this marathon meal service. The crew wheeled a trolley up an aisle, served a few people then wheeled it all the way to the back. Then it would appear again about 10 minutes later, when exactly the same thing would happen. Repeat again and again.
Here’s an approximate breakdown of the first four or so hours of the flight:
1 p.m.: Takeoff.
1:30 p.m.: Seatbelt sign off, trolleys start appearing.
2 p.m.: Drinks served with snacks.
3 p.m.: Lunch tray served with second round of drinks.
3:30 p.m.: I completely finish my meal and wait patiently for the crew to collect the tray. The completely full cabin and never-ending procession of trolleys up and down the narrow aisles means it’s impossible to use the bathroom.
4 p.m.: Trays still not collected, and the crew have given up on serving tea or coffee. Passengers are increasingly frustrated at being imprisoned at their seats by dirty meal trays and start stuffing them elsewhere, like in the aisles and around their feet. When a crew member asks a neighbor not to block the aisle with his food tray, the passenger curtly responds, “Well, why don’t you collect them, then?”.
4:30 p.m.: It’s now dark outside. Unable to wait any longer, I maneuver myself out of my seat to use the bathroom, placing my tray back on the tray table. The trolley parade continues, with crew yet again pushing trolleys up the aisle, so I’m hopeful my tray will finally be collected.
4:40 p.m.: I return to my seat to find my dirty tray was still on my tray table. It’s the same all around me. Passengers are now yelling out in the cabin: “Where are the crew?” “Why are our trays still here?” “Why is this taking so long?” Flight attendants ignore call buttons.
5:15 p.m.: Trays are finally collected, and lunch service is finally concluded.
Failing BA? Well, the above is a report from London-Dubai, in Economy, in a brand new Airbus A350. Indeed: the quote above is not a review on Brussels Airlines, but on British Airways. Posted by the same guy, one month ago. https://thepointsguy.co.uk/reviews/brit ... 0-economy/
You did, handily, “forget” to mention that this was while a crew was training a new and extended business class service on a new aircraft with a new seat concept. Three things I think that were missing from that Brussels Airlines flight ... I might be wrong ...
Please i don't want another bashing discussion against SN, it's just an avgeek normal question . It can happen to airlines. Some Transavia France flights are sometimes operated by Transavia NL and vice versa.
In 2009, KLM operated some flights between Nairobi and Amsterdam, for Kenya Airways, with a KLM MD11.
If i remmember, Kenya Airways did same thing, for KLM, few years ago, on AMS NBO route. A KQ B787, flying with KLM flight number.
Rwanda Aviation News (Drones, Air Force, Civil Aviation, Space, Air Balloon): https://www.facebook.com/RwandAn-Flyer-153177931456873
Its not the first winter that BruAir is operating flights for Swiss. Its mostly on saturday. It was even done with Avro at the time. I remember flights to corsica and palma.
This flight LX410/LX411 is indeed operated by SN A319s during the winter. It has been mentioned earlier (January 2019) in our forum: viewtopic.php?t=65151&start=80#p377282
. It can happen to airlines. Some Transavia France flights are sometimes operated by Transavia NL and vice versa.