Load balancing probably was the issue with the captain not allowing you and the others to change your assigned seats. This might also have even been the issue with changing your seat online in the first place. I have heard of some cases where seat selection was restricted on half empty flights.
What exactly was so bad. You booked a + 4hr flight in economy on a short hall narrow body aircraft. What were you expecting a lie flat bed and a la carte dining? If you want seats selection pay for it or get BA airline status. What other airline gives free economy seat selection without paying. You had an aisle seat to stretch your legs and more leg room than any low cost carrier plane gives and they would charge you 15-20€ to reserve a seat and they don't give you free water or pretzels.
Aegean airlines allows free seat selection and provides free meals on all flights to Athens. This includes Edinburgh-Athens (similar distance as LHR-LCA)
If the plane is not very full the captain has to maintain load balancing. I fly BA lots and think they are a really good choice. Sorry you didn't like them, there is always easyjet and Ryanair instead.
I do this flight about 6-8 times a year. No longer in economy as it’s too noisy, no inflight service ( a packet of nuts is not inflight service) and the journey is too long for a ‘budget’ experience. One option is to stock up with about £20 of gourmet sandwiches and drinks from Pret. Club class is what economy used to be before covid19. The food is a basic economy style meal ( unlike the experience offered by Austrian) and the service depends on the mood of the crew- some provide non stop drinks, other crews just stick to their basic duty. Yes, it’s a shame BA does not have competition on this route.
This is a competitive route with the likes of Easyjet, Ryanair, TUI, Wizz, Jet2 all operating to Larnaca and none of them even provide water without a fee unlike BA. Great report
You were moved back because of the load sheet. Your weight means different things in different parts of the aircraft. We calculate our performance based on the weight and where we estimated the Centre of gravity to be. If this is our the aircraft could take off out of trim which can be very very dangerous.
Cyprus is technically in Asia and has always been part of the Middle East as much as it is European; in fact at one point British Airways did have long haul planes for the route (Boeing 777 Tehran-Larnaca-London Heathrow) and even the designated European service to Larnaca had free food and in flight videos to differentiate Larnaca from 'short haul' destinations with TriStars and 767s. BA's problem is that it defines short haul as being anything under 6 hours, so destinations like Cairo, Larnaca, Tel Aviv and Amman have the same austere soft and hard product provision as for Paris or Milan. Alex Cruz wrecked BA's service on short and medium haul. BA needs to create a medium haul concept for Near East destinations. It is a pity Cyprus Airways or Aegean don't fly the LHR-LCA route to provide competition.
Traditionally, going right back, Nicosia (subsequently Larnaca) and TLV were BEA destinations while AMM, BEY, CAI, and DAM were BOAC destinations so when these airlines amalgamated LCA and TLV continued to be served by the European division from T1 while the other destinations were served by the Overseas division from T3. I recall that the THR services used to make a stop at LCA. This allowed for F class to continue to be offered on this route after BA replaced F class with C lass on it's intra-European routes in Spring 1981. Also going back to the 70's some Overseas division VC10 operated flights to East Africa were also routed through LCA. There was a bad period on the LCA route. I recall flying on a normal BA scheduled flight LHR-LCA in December 1976 only to find the flight operated by a British Airtours Boeing 707 instead of the expected BA Trident 2 in an all Y configuration with high density seating and a breakfast service substantially inferior to what I was used to when travelling BA regularly on the LHR-EDI route (pre-shuttle). All BA European flights used to have free food in the days of the Tristars! I do not believe that the Tristars and 767's used on LCA terminating services were in longhaul configurations though; they were in the standard European configurations and offered Club Europe, not Club World. At some point circa 2000 (give or take, I can't remember the exact year) the LCA route BA services started to be operated by GB Airways A320's on behalf of BA. Hot meals were still provided then. It was not until the mid-2000's that free food was done away with on BA intra-European routes, first by replacing full meals with those hot pizza slices and deliboxes and then doing away with it entirely although I seem to recall that meals were initially retained on longer sectors such as LCA. I agree with all that you say about flights of this length, especially the Club Europe product which has become a disgrace especially now that the extra legroom in the forward rows has been removed and the catering downgraded so much. I can recall flying Olympic LHR-ATH in 1979 aboard a 707 in F class where a full long haul style F class service was provided with the broadsheet size menus and the course by course service from the trolleys. Such a shame that the best available product on a flight from LHR to LCA is the disgrace of a business class called Club Europe. I believe the scheduled airlines within Europe made a big mistake. Instead of retaining the traditional standards of service and competing with the low cost carriers on quality, they decided to join the race to the bottom and compete on price. I only recently discovered that the European style service has been extended to the former BOAC destinations such as CAI. This is really not acceptable.
@@Ben-xe8ps Thank you for this excellent history of LHR-Cyprus. In fact BEA created Cyprus Airways in order to serve some BOAC destinations such as Doha. Effectively BEA would operate Comet 4Bs to Athens or Nicosia and then the flight would 'become' Cyprus Airways (ie a regional route to Doha/Bahrain/Cairo rather than a long/medium haul from London Heathrow). I don't know if passengers had to disembark first and then re-board to underline a nominal (but legal) concept that the BEA flight to Nicosia had terminated and passengers were now boarding a 'new' flight. As you say British Airways operated a real variety of planes for this route - to the extent that the last VC-10 in BA service was from Larnaca to London Heathrow (as was the final TriStar and B767). Larnaca and Cyprus retains today a sense of being European but not quite Europe
@@nickbiskinis4854 I would imagine that two flight coupons were issued, one for flight BE000 to Nicosia and one for flight CY000 from Nicosia to wherever. I don't believe that the physical disembarkation of passengers would be important one way or the other although I suspect that they probably did simply because it was so much easier for passengers to disembark at transit stops in those days (uncrowded airports, no security checks etc) and to avoid cleaning/refuelling with passengers on board. In the days following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus when Cyprus Airways Tridents were all destroyed and operations were moved from Nicosia to Larnaca, Cyprus Airways resumed operations using a Viscount obtained from somewhere which they configured two class FY and operated to/from Athens. Operations to LHR resumed using a leased Air New Zealand DC8.
Looked ok to me, what were you expecting? It's a 4 hour 'bus' trip these days. I didn't notice any rude staff, on the contrary, and it all looked nice and clean. You are welcome to Ryanair but personally I have no time for their boss.
Due to weight and balance of the aircraft, the captain advised to move back to original seats. This video seems old as the new uniform has been out for 11 months and there are no menus in the seat back pockets for the highlife cafe service.
at 2:15, u showed yur ticket to the agent for boarding, but just after at 2:50 they make u scan i assume yur ticket so the gate opens to get on the plane? First time i see that. Usually after the agent checks the ticket, u get on the plane.
@@Ben-xe8ps yes, boarding card, u are correct... but the point of the message is why have an agent check the boarding card and still make u scan it seconds later to board.
This review is so old….BA haven’t given out those dettol wipes for about 18 to 24 months. You haven’t said how the crew were rude. You were just asked to return to the seat you’d paid for. Rubbish review.
@bo1ekpu1x I think there was an IT problem, so nobody could pick their seats upon online as usual 24hrs before , hence why seats were allocated when they checked in, they couldn't pick themselves. In this case, I would ring and explain that I couldn't pick my seat. I'm sure they would have been happy to help
We’re flying from LCY to ZRH with BA tomorrow, so will be interesting to compare our experience with yours. For a scheduled 1hr 10m flight I expect very little onboard service. Flew BA a fair bit in the 1990s and experience was OK, but on LGW to Faro and return flights in Oct 2022 in Club Europe, the service and food quality was pretty dire. BA is not what it was - it’s just another low-cost (or not so low-cost) mediocre carrier. A friend of ours is a retired BA catering manager - they treat their pensioners pretty shabbily too.
Cannot make a fair comparison as BA flights ex-LCY are operated by a different division of BA. Hence some say that for Y class the BA experience at LCY is better than BA at LHR.
These days BA is such a poor airline with bad value for money, useless website/IT systems and average at best in cabin experience. A disgrace as a national airline.
What a stupid review. You didn’t explain how anyone was ‘rude’…and I think you really mean that you were upset that you didn’t get your own way with the seats. In terms of the service, you got exactly what is advertised. If you want more in-flight service, you need to pay for it!
For me Larnaca was very boring, walks were all stoney and for me Larnaca has nothing to offer,when I was there, I had nothing to do, the hotel was very nice but the restaurants near by was just very mediocre nothing special
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Load balancing probably was the issue with the captain not allowing you and the others to change your assigned seats. This might also have even been the issue with changing your seat online in the first place. I have heard of some cases where seat selection was restricted on half empty flights.
What exactly was so bad. You booked a + 4hr flight in economy on a short hall narrow body aircraft. What were you expecting a lie flat bed and a la carte dining? If you want seats selection pay for it or get BA airline status. What other airline gives free economy seat selection without paying. You had an aisle seat to stretch your legs and more leg room than any low cost carrier plane gives and they would charge you 15-20€ to reserve a seat and they don't give you free water or pretzels.
Aegean airlines allows free seat selection and provides free meals on all flights to Athens. This includes Edinburgh-Athens (similar distance as LHR-LCA)
ryanair has more legroom than BA.. and is it really 'free' when the fare is 3 or more times the cost?
If the plane is not very full the captain has to maintain load balancing. I fly BA lots and think they are a really good choice. Sorry you didn't like them, there is always easyjet and Ryanair instead.
I think the seating enforcement is in case the plane crashes. They like to know who was sitting where.
No this is a myth.
I do this flight about 6-8 times a year. No longer in economy as it’s too noisy, no inflight service ( a packet of nuts is not inflight service) and the journey is too long for a ‘budget’ experience. One option is to stock up with about £20 of gourmet sandwiches and drinks from Pret.
Club class is what economy used to be before covid19. The food is a basic economy style meal ( unlike the experience offered by Austrian) and the service depends on the mood of the crew- some provide non stop drinks, other crews just stick to their basic duty.
Yes, it’s a shame BA does not have competition on this route.
This is a competitive route with the likes of Easyjet, Ryanair, TUI, Wizz, Jet2 all operating to Larnaca and none of them even provide water without a fee unlike BA. Great report
You were moved back because of the load sheet. Your weight means different things in different parts of the aircraft. We calculate our performance based on the weight and where we estimated the Centre of gravity to be. If this is our the aircraft could take off out of trim which can be very very dangerous.
You should try flying in a Ryanair SP registered 737 , the hardest and most uncomfortable seats ever!
Cyprus is technically in Asia and has always been part of the Middle East as much as it is European; in fact at one point British Airways did have long haul planes for the route (Boeing 777 Tehran-Larnaca-London Heathrow) and even the designated European service to Larnaca had free food and in flight videos to differentiate Larnaca from 'short haul' destinations with TriStars and 767s. BA's problem is that it defines short haul as being anything under 6 hours, so destinations like Cairo, Larnaca, Tel Aviv and Amman have the same austere soft and hard product provision as for Paris or Milan. Alex Cruz wrecked BA's service on short and medium haul. BA needs to create a medium haul concept for Near East destinations. It is a pity Cyprus Airways or Aegean don't fly the LHR-LCA route to provide competition.
Traditionally, going right back, Nicosia (subsequently Larnaca) and TLV were BEA destinations while AMM, BEY, CAI, and DAM were BOAC destinations so when these airlines amalgamated LCA and TLV continued to be served by the European division from T1 while the other destinations were served by the Overseas division from T3. I recall that the THR services used to make a stop at LCA. This allowed for F class to continue to be offered on this route after BA replaced F class with C lass on it's intra-European routes in Spring 1981. Also going back to the 70's some Overseas division VC10 operated flights to East Africa were also routed through LCA.
There was a bad period on the LCA route. I recall flying on a normal BA scheduled flight LHR-LCA in December 1976 only to find the flight operated by a British Airtours Boeing 707 instead of the expected BA Trident 2 in an all Y configuration with high density seating and a breakfast service substantially inferior to what I was used to when travelling BA regularly on the LHR-EDI route (pre-shuttle).
All BA European flights used to have free food in the days of the Tristars! I do not believe that the Tristars and 767's used on LCA terminating services were in longhaul configurations though; they were in the standard European configurations and offered Club Europe, not Club World.
At some point circa 2000 (give or take, I can't remember the exact year) the LCA route BA services started to be operated by GB Airways A320's on behalf of BA. Hot meals were still provided then. It was not until the mid-2000's that free food was done away with on BA intra-European routes, first by replacing full meals with those hot pizza slices and deliboxes and then doing away with it entirely although I seem to recall that meals were initially retained on longer sectors such as LCA.
I agree with all that you say about flights of this length, especially the Club Europe product which has become a disgrace especially now that the extra legroom in the forward rows has been removed and the catering downgraded so much. I can recall flying Olympic LHR-ATH in 1979 aboard a 707 in F class where a full long haul style F class service was provided with the broadsheet size menus and the course by course service from the trolleys. Such a shame that the best available product on a flight from LHR to LCA is the disgrace of a business class called Club Europe.
I believe the scheduled airlines within Europe made a big mistake. Instead of retaining the traditional standards of service and competing with the low cost carriers on quality, they decided to join the race to the bottom and compete on price.
I only recently discovered that the European style service has been extended to the former BOAC destinations such as CAI. This is really not acceptable.
@@Ben-xe8ps Thank you for this excellent history of LHR-Cyprus. In fact BEA created Cyprus Airways in order to serve some BOAC destinations such as Doha. Effectively BEA would operate Comet 4Bs to Athens or Nicosia and then the flight would 'become' Cyprus Airways (ie a regional route to Doha/Bahrain/Cairo rather than a long/medium haul from London Heathrow). I don't know if passengers had to disembark first and then re-board to underline a nominal (but legal) concept that the BEA flight to Nicosia had terminated and passengers were now boarding a 'new' flight. As you say British Airways operated a real variety of planes for this route - to the extent that the last VC-10 in BA service was from Larnaca to London Heathrow (as was the final TriStar and B767). Larnaca and Cyprus retains today a sense of being European but not quite Europe
@@nickbiskinis4854 I would imagine that two flight coupons were issued, one for flight BE000 to Nicosia and one for flight CY000 from Nicosia to wherever. I don't believe that the physical disembarkation of passengers would be important one way or the other although I suspect that they probably did simply because it was so much easier for passengers to disembark at transit stops in those days (uncrowded airports, no security checks etc) and to avoid cleaning/refuelling with passengers on board.
In the days following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus when Cyprus Airways Tridents were all destroyed and operations were moved from Nicosia to Larnaca, Cyprus Airways resumed operations using a Viscount obtained from somewhere which they configured two class FY and operated to/from Athens. Operations to LHR resumed using a leased Air New Zealand DC8.
@@Ben-xe8ps And the one remaining Trident stands forlornly at Nicosia Airport today awaiting departure for 50 years
Looked ok to me, what were you expecting? It's a 4 hour 'bus' trip these days. I didn't notice any rude staff, on the contrary, and it all looked nice and clean. You are welcome to Ryanair but personally I have no time for their boss.
Due to weight and balance of the aircraft, the captain advised to move back to original seats.
This video seems old as the new uniform has been out for 11 months and there are no menus in the seat back pockets for the highlife cafe service.
at 2:15, u showed yur ticket to the agent for boarding, but just after at 2:50 they make u scan i assume yur ticket so the gate opens to get on the plane? First time i see that. Usually after the agent checks the ticket, u get on the plane.
It's a boarding card, not a ticket. A ticket is something completely different.
@@Ben-xe8ps yes, boarding card, u are correct... but the point of the message is why have an agent check the boarding card and still make u scan it seconds later to board.
This review is so old….BA haven’t given out those dettol wipes for about 18 to 24 months. You haven’t said how the crew were rude. You were just asked to return to the seat you’d paid for. Rubbish review.
I have to agree. Plus there have been menus in the seatback pockets for months now but none in this video.
Nice trip report
Why didn't you tell people that you can choose your seat if you check in on line 24 hours before your flight.
@bo1ekpu1x I think there was an IT problem, so nobody could pick their seats upon online as usual 24hrs before , hence why seats were allocated when they checked in, they couldn't pick themselves.
In this case, I would ring and explain that I couldn't pick my seat. I'm sure they would have been happy to help
When was this filmed out of pure interest, I notice the uniform was the old one.
Oh yes. This must be well over 6/7 months ago if not older
Must have been 11 months ago
I know B.A. are hardly great these days but this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone saying they would prefer Ryanair 😅😅😅
Nice video 👍👍👌👌⭐⭐👏🩶🩶🌟
Another good reason why I am an ABBA flier
We’re flying from LCY to ZRH with BA tomorrow, so will be interesting to compare our experience with yours. For a scheduled 1hr 10m flight I expect very little onboard service. Flew BA a fair bit in the 1990s and experience was OK, but on LGW to Faro and return flights in Oct 2022 in Club Europe, the service and food quality was pretty dire. BA is not what it was - it’s just another low-cost (or not so low-cost) mediocre carrier. A friend of ours is a retired BA catering manager - they treat their pensioners pretty shabbily too.
Cannot make a fair comparison as BA flights ex-LCY are operated by a different division of BA. Hence some say that for Y class the BA experience at LCY is better than BA at LHR.
City flyer are excellent
It's an economy 'no frills' flight. I have had worse.
Alex Cruz should never ever be let loose running an airline- totally damaged BA service and reputation for good
These days BA is such a poor airline with bad value for money, useless website/IT systems and average at best in cabin experience. A disgrace as a national airline.
What a stupid review. You didn’t explain how anyone was ‘rude’…and I think you really mean that you were upset that you didn’t get your own way with the seats. In terms of the service, you got exactly what is advertised. If you want more in-flight service, you need to pay for it!
4 hours in a plane and they give you pretzels how cheap can they get I will be piss off
I think almost any European carrier as well as American in economy will offer a buy on board service these days.
I would rather walk to Larnaca than fly with BA
Good try big buddy !
For me Larnaca was very boring, walks were all stoney and for me Larnaca has nothing to offer,when I was there, I had nothing to do, the hotel was very nice but the restaurants near by was just very mediocre nothing special
BA is a has-been..... like the country.... a has-been and now ranked second rate. Ops- 3 rate....
You can only change seats after takeoff as you have to be in your assigned seat in case of emergency.
Not correct.
Rubbish ! But , hey … you made it alive so - 😅
You have right, Ryanair has a better product than BA. Absolutely recommended for Cyprus-UK. Keep traveling 💪🏻🩵