BA oneworld partner IB also offers BOB so its not as if they would be the first ”legacy” carrier to do so.

The US carriers have been instigating this for some time now, with the like sof AA and US introducing Buy-on-Board. A US Airways representative (could have been CEO, I can’t remember off hand) recently said that they were pleased other airliens were intorducing it too, as the industry had to modernise, I suspect though he’s pleased because it was a service differentiator which was working against US until the others introduced it in a more widespread way.

A UK historical society once reported in its magazine that two years earlier, all members making its organised trip to France had thought that the food in the hotel was terrible. On their latest trip, the hotel had closed its restaurant for renovation, so no food was available. It was generally agreed that this was a great improvement.

Having been foolish enough to have tried a mouthful of a British Aeroflot sandwich during a flight to Italy a couple of years ago, I’d consider no food to be a great improvement. But I’m old enough to remember the days when at least one airline – British United – provided a full meal on London to Italy routes.

This is a point I’ve long been making. If you buy a cup of tea onboard it tends to be of a decent size, with hot water poured over a tea bag. If you get free tea on board, it tends to be half a mouthful in a tiny cup (well half a mouthful for my big mouth) from a tea pot which was brewed 20 minutes eralier and is so thick you can leave the plastic spoon stood up in it.

In some respects, the complimetary meals are much the same. I think if they move to BOB then yes, it has to be decent quality, but you’ll get more than half a mouthful of nasty sandwich is you spend some money.

My colleauges were just talking about this in the office and saying that even recently, they’ve had awful refreshements from the legacy carriers (not just BA) and that they’d prefer to pay for them to know they’ll get something of a decent size and hopefully quality.