Heathrow Airport – Mike's Twitter Overflow

BA’s Heathrow Lounge Food, Pt 2: The Lord of the Flies?

Following on from my recent post regarding a rather poor Environmental Health Report for BA’s “exclusive” Concorde Room, Hillingdon Council, the local authority responsible for Heathrow, have conducted further inspections of BA’s lounge operations at the airport.

This time, the largest lounge in T5, the “Galleries Club South” scored 2 out of 5, like it’s neighbour.

The report for this lounge highlights a number of basic food hygiene failings that seem to indicate a real lack of care.

Continue reading “BA’s Heathrow Lounge Food, Pt 2: The Lord of the Flies?”

BA’s Heathrow Lounge Food: Past it’s sell-by date?

Something of a first world problem admittedly, but it’s recently come to the attention of the various frequent flyer circles that BA’s “flagship” lounges at it’s Heathrow hub, the T5 Concorde Room and First Class Lounge recently only scored 2 (out of 5) on a recent food hygiene inspection.

The low score places this “exclusive” venue (to paraphrase BA), reserved specifically for it’s “top customers”, into the bottom 10% of food service premises in the UK. This is something of a last straw for BA’s loyal frequent flyers who have already been upset by a perceived reduction in the quality and service offered by the lounges since the contract for running the food service operation at all BA’s UK lounges were switched to a new operator earlier this year.

There have been complaints of less choice, simple service failures such as grubby cups, glasses and plates put out for customers to use, and used, dirty pots not being regularly cleared away, food not being cooked through properly, and a previously reasonable hot buffet being replaced with troughs of stodgy “gloop” – unpleasant wet food.

Thanks to a Freedom of Information request, the local authority responsible for the inspection, Hillingdon Council, have made the full contents of the report available, highlighting a catalogue of basic food safety disasters:

Out-of-date food in the kitchens
Multiple food preparation areas being sufficiently dirty to be in need of immediate cleaning
“High-risk” food such as prepared sandwiches and cooked meats being insufficiently chilled
Hot buffet food being kept at a sufficiently low temperature to increase risk
Cross-contamination between raw and cooked food
Kitchen maintenance problems such as holes in the walls and floor
Inadequate documentation of staff training

BA have so far been tight-lipped on the matter, anecdotal reports suggesting that senior BA figures consider this just to be some “noisy people on the Internet” which probably highlights that they don’t get it and have their head firmly in the sand. Does this indicate a level of disrespect within BA for it’s customers?

To their credit BaxterStorey meanwhile have issued a statement which, while conciliatory in tone and recognises the failings to some extent, largely seems to fob the problem off on needing to “refurbish” the kitchen.

This really isn’t a brilliant response. Remember, we’re talking about BA’s flagship lounge at it’s flagship airport.

In terms of apologising, what should BA do?

One of the questions among the frequent flyer community has been over BA’s handling of this. While BA’s sub-contractor has decided to issue a statement, there’s been nothing from BA to the most regular lounge guests, it’s frequent flyers.

It’s my opinion that there’s only one way BA can approach this:

with openness, transparency, responsibility and accountability

I know that’s probably a tough ask of a large multi-national corporation with a slick PR machine which is used to deny accountability for everything from delays to lost luggage.

You may ask why the frequent flyers care so much about getting a response from BA, or why BA should care so much to communicate in an frank and honest way with it’s customers?

The frequent flyers care about getting a spin-free honest reply, because they have made a financial and emotional investment in BA. To earn the magic Silver and Gold cards to get them in the privacy of the Galleries lounges, they have spent a lot of money and time with the airline.

They’ve been good, regular customers, demonstrated loyalty to BA, and so have a built an expectation of being dealt with respectfully and fairly in return. That trust has been betrayed by BA and BaxterStorey.

To feed them spin is likely to just increase the levels of angst and venom. The frequent flyers are actively looking for a reason to forgive.

The more honest and fair BA are with their response the more likely they are to be forgiven by it’s community of regular passengers.

See this as an opportunity to set themselves apart from their competitors. It’s not a disaster that must be avoided. Approach it head on.

You’ve been let down, we failed to meet your expectations. We’ve let our supplier take their eye off the ball. We’re sorry. You deserve better. We’ll do better. Here’s how…

Be honest about the mistakes that led to this, and what’s going to happen to make it better.

Most importantly, mean it then do it.

Heathrow – where clean loos are an inconvenience…

My partner came back from South Africa this morning, and had asked if I could go and collect her from Heathrow.

Nipping to the Gents in the T5 arrivals hall was a mixture of what I can only describe as unpleasantness crossed with a few surreal moments.

I had to try about 4 stalls before I found one which didn’t have one or all of the following:

Urine sprayed all over the floor, seat and toilet pan.
Pubic hair stuck to the seat and toilet pan.
Dirty shoe prints on the toilet seat.
Diarrhoea sprayed all over the toilet and seat.
Faeces on the toilet seat.
No toilet paper.

Even the one I ended up using had to be swabbed down a bit first.

While looking for an (almost) acceptable stall, I came across a guy in the middle of emptying his bowels, sat with the toilet door wide open, with his luggage on a trolley in front of it, so that “he didn’t let his belongings out of his sight”.

I accept that some people have different toilet culture to us Brits, but this was getting quite bizarre, as well as inconvenient.

More than half the sinks did not seem to have soap in the dispensers, took trying 4 sinks before I found one with soap, and many of the hand dryers did not work (and had signs saying this was the case, in some cases).

I know public toilets aren’t always the best places on Earth, but this was a truly disgusting experience.

Why are these toilets so unloved?

I do wonder if they are cleaned and maintained by a minimum wage, zero hours employee, working for an outsourced cleaning contractor, who seems to have a very different idea of “clean” to you and me, that quite simply doesn’t care as long as they get paid?

Providing a clean and properly working facility is part of your brand. Why allow your brand to be smeared by such a lack of care and attention?

Welcome to Britain, eh?

Third Runway, or not Third Runway?

Hot news today is Heathrow Airport’s third runway plans. It seems there’s some realisation that a “Boris Island” won’t be built early enough to satisfy the needs of the South East’s demand for landing slots, and something needs to be done now rather than in 20-odd years.

There is a perception that London lags behind Amsterdam Schiphol, Paris Charles De Gaulle or Frankfurt, in the sense that it’s not an “airline hub” of the same magnitude, and dear old London Town is being left behind.

If anyone has been through any of the above airports recently, I’m not entirely sure that being like them is something we should be aspiring to!

I’ve already made my views known about Frankfurt‘s recent redevelopments, trying to make it less painful than before, and still managing to miss the target.

Anyone who flies to Amsterdam often enough will have experienced the mind-numbingly long taxi to or from their relatively new runway, which far enough away to be built in a completely different town to the airport itself. You would be forgiven for thinking you’re driving to the UK, as the taxi time is often as long as the flight itself, unless you’re lucky enough that the prevailing wind lets you take off and land closer to the terminal.

As for Charles De Gaulle… I’ll just give you a Gallic shrug.

While Heathrow is BA’s “hub”, it’s not really a hub operation in the sense of a US air carrier. Flights don’t arrive and depart in deliberately orchestrated waves, purposely designed to connect, such as Delta’s operations in Atlanta. BA’s hub operation is more by accident, because of the sheer volume of the operation, rather than schedule design. Flights “happen” to connect, rather than do so by design.

Following the effective breakup of the BAA, Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted are now owned by different operators, and from reading this BBC article each of them seem to be vying for a bit of the cherry, while Boris would like to demolish Heathrow entirely.

What it’s left me wondering is why there is a complete lack of joined up approach?

Danger Will Robinson! Radical thinking…

In terms of land and environmental concerns such as noise, a 2nd runway at Gatwick seems to be an easy win when compared against putting a 3rd runway at Heathrow.

Given that we’re seemingly hell bent on building HS2 (let’s ignore the fact that less than half of the money being spent on HS2 could revolutionise rail in the North of England) , wouldn’t it be eminently sensible to extend it such that it touches Heathrow and extends South to Gatwick? Use the train as a complementary form of transport to the train, rather than as a competitor.

It could then serve a dual-purpose of making it more convenient for those in the Midlands to access Heathrow and Gatwick, while also handling connecting traffic between Gatwick and Heathrow.

What would the Gatwick to Heathrow travel time be on such a train? About 20-25 minutes? I know some airports where it can take just as long to transfer between terminals, or to get from departure lounge to gate!

Might it even be possible to provide trains, or designated sections of trains, for “sterile transit” between the airports, without the need to officially enter the UK?

Yes, this will involve taking on the fearsome NIMBYs of Surrey, but isn’t it all for the “greater good”?

Should we ever decide to build “Boris Island” or devastate Hoo with a big International airport, it’s close enough to HS1 to be hooked up to that. We can offer fast train connections into Central London, and maybe even to France or Brussels from the airport. Just think, it might be preferable to fly in to Boris Island then get the train, if you’re travelling to Lille!

But, as I say, that would require some joined-up thinking. Something we need to get better at.

Bit windy out! Using social media for good…

Unless you’ve been living below ground for the last 24 hours, those of you in the UK can’t have helped notice it’s a bit windy out.

This sort of severe weather inevitably brings disruption, but I’ve been heartened to see a number of organisations using social media to spread the word quickly.

The social media folks @VirginTrains, Amy & Ste, have been doing a great job of relaying information out via Twitter, especially regarding heavily disrupted services into Scotland. Behind the scenes Virgin has been leading the UK rail industry on a project to improve the flow of information to passengers during disruption, and from what I’ve seen today, it seems to be working really well.

They are clearly providing a bi-directional conduit for information – they are getting their info from regular incident update calls (which should happen every 20 minutes, apparently), and direct from their route control, which means the information is very fresh, rather than out of date, which has classically been the normal complaint if you were to phone National Rail Enquiries.

What is missing is a copy of the Twitter feed on the Virgin Trains website – there’s currently no realtime information about the state of their service today provided on their website, no banner saying, “It is windy. Stuff is broken. Please check before you travel.” It is relatively trivial to embed an “alert bar” and/or a Twitter feed into a webpage, and would help those who happen to not use Twitter.

Also worthy mentions to @HeathrowAirport and @LondonCityAir(port) who have been using The Force for good today, providing regular updates about issues with travel to LHR due to a fallen tree on the Piccadilly Line, and to LCY due to an earlier meltdown on the DLR and the high winds making landing and taking off a challenge for the pilots on the smaller planes which fly to London City.

The main thing I think the LCY Twitter folks could do better right now is actually give more info about what is/isn’t cancelled – rather than “contact your airline” which sort of smacks of “not our problem”, even if that’s not the sentiment.

Ah well, wind has picked up again and the sideways rain has returned. I’ll see if I can spy an ark coming down the street.