Passenger rebellion brewing? Toddler-style tantrum on BA flight may be just the start
After a ‘hangry’ passenger loudly complains British Airways has gone to the dogs, Stephen Jardine wonders if a revolutionary mood is spreading among those in the cheap seats
The man in 12c was angry. The bottle of water and packet of biscuits offered on the journey from London was not hitting the spot. Instead he wanted a sandwich or something hot to eat but this was the last flight of the day and nothing else was available.
The tantrum that followed would have embarrassed a two-year-old. I heard it all because I was sitting across the aisle, taking in the whole meltdown which included all the greatest hits – how much he’d paid for his ticket, how better things used to be and how British Airways had gone to the dogs.
At one point, I thought the woman next to me with a toddler was going to reach across and offer the hangry man a packet of raisins and a rusk to calm him down but she clearly realised he was beyond reason.
In the tense atmosphere of a late-running, last flight, everyone else stared at their phone screens or shut their eyes. Packed inside a metal tube for an hour, it would have been a brave traveller indeed who would have voiced what we were all really thinking. “It’s a 60-minute flight and you are about 18 stone – you’ll survive.”
Lost largesse
I suspect what pushed him to tipping point was not malnutrition but nostalgia. He looked old enough to remember the days when British Airways and British Midland competed on the Scotland route on the basis of largesse.
No one thought about the poor staff who had to deliver a full drinks and meal service in about 30 minutes or the vast amount of waste generated by all those unused little sachets of salt and pepper, plus the napkins, plastic knives and forks, and assorted packaging detritus. And all this for a flight shorter than the time it gets from Newhaven to Edinburgh Airport on a tram.
In these leaner, tighter times, the generosity of the catering on short-haul routes is a distant memory but that’s really no bad thing. Dishing up 120 trays of chicken chasseur may have worked in the past but today you’d need an extra-wide-bodied jet just to deal with all the dietary requirements and intolerances. On a long-haul flight, that is one thing, but on shorter journeys, what’s the point?
Chicken chasseur – for some
Plus every airport is now packed with catering options where you can pick up enough food for a couple of hours. And if you don’t want to spend the GDP of a South American country on a sandwich and crisps from Pret, you can always choose to bring your own.
Getting rid of the meal service reduces waste, cuts stress for the staff and also contributes to our national fight against obesity but it does come with a risk, and that is fanning the fires of revolution.
At take-off, we are all travellers together. Then the little curtain is pulled across row 10 and it begins. While those of us in economy chew on a biscuit and swig a Lilliputian-sized bottle of water, we can hear the chink of glasses and the warm buzz of alcohol-fuelled conversation. And what’s that delicious smell? Could it be chicken chasseur?
At 32,000ft, modern economics has reached seat 12c but up front they are still partying like it’s 1999.
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