BOB Shrinkage!

[songbirdstew]

I'm a little confused. The food and drug administration will not let LSG re-sell fresh BOB. If it doesn't sell, it gets pitched. Who cares if the crew member eats something that will be garbage when they land at their final destination???? That's CRAP.

Even if they DID allow resales on another flight, I would think they would need to keep the meals at a constant temperature/chillers on/ etc which won't happen. After food sales, you freeze in those back galleys and turn off the chillers.

My personal opinion is to stop ALL the madness and get rid of ALL fresh BOB except the crappy sealed snack boxes with the non-perishable contents. At the end of the flight the LSG should come on and collect them as they can be re-used.

 

[songbirdstew]

A couple of points.
Beverages are not the same as BOB. The company buys the soda or water and then sells them.
With the BOB LSG assumes all the risk and profit! (US may get a small cut but I am not sure on that).

The same article mentioned the handhelds are coming on line at years end.

So if you do steal or throw away a sandwhich it is not US Airways that you hurt but LSG!

At the end of the flight LSG is required to throw out that sandwich anyways due to food and drug adminisration regulations. The sealed snack box is another matter....

 

[UPNAWAY]

Them throwing it away is not th eissue it is about accounting to what happened.

Obviously if there is no back end accoutning one could sell them and keep the money.

 

[flygirl74]

Effective January 1, 2009 one the East side crew meals return per our contract! This will affect flight attendants working non-transoceanic flights. We never lost crew meals for transatlantic so no change there. Anyway, read more about it in your contract for the parameters at section 4-3.
Gobble- Gobble!!

 

[SS255]

I'm a little confused. The food and drug administration will not let LSG re-sell fresh BOB. If it doesn't sell, it gets pitched. Who cares if the crew member eats something that will be garbage when they land at their final destination???? That's CRAP.

Which is why the only way that this business model will work is to eliminate 95% of the guesswork. How? By allowing pax to purchase BOB online at check-in and at kiosks. Of course there will always be the hiccups created by misconnects, but it would eliminate most of the waste, and especially most of the customer discontent.

 

[Zarah]

Crew meals were gross and I don't miss them at all.

 

[PHX-F/A]

Did see it and have been on flights where this happens. It seems too many hands in the cookie jar. I dont think that the meals are being given away by F/A's but more are taken from outside sources or not handled properly for disposal/return.

OK, here's how one of the flights on my trip went.

LSG boarding bill said 12 sandwiches, there were 8,
9 salads, there were 6, 10 snack boxes, there were 8.

There counts right out of the kitchen never match whats in the cart. So if there is any of what they say is happening, it's after LSG shorted the order in the first place.

Sometimes the boarding bill is missing, and the cash envelope is not filled out with start counts.

If LSG is loosing money, they need to start looking in their own kitchen first.

 

[FlightChic]

Mgmt should not be blaming the employees! They don't have a system or procedure in place to keep track everything. Apparently neither does LSG. Sometimes they arrive to pick up the money. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they arrive to pick up money even though we didn't receive meals. Sometimes we get several meals. Sometimes we get a lot. Most times we get only a few. The other morning I found a whole trashbag full of snack boxes with a seal around them. We were on the 737-400 all day long with very short flights and why they were there sealed up I have no idea. A couple of weeks before that we went PHL-MIA and that is normally a snack box flight (they only give us 8-10 boxes but hey, it's still a snack flight) and normally there aren't very many people who ask for meals but that one day people were asking about them and we didn't have any. Go figure. Don't blame the f/as, caterers, cleaners etc. There isn't a system in place to keep track of it all. You still have to count the meals because sometimes the count isn't even correct. Us peons are not the ones to blame for the shrinkage.

 

[US1YFARE]

A couple of weeks before that we went PHL-MIA and that is normally a snack box flight (

nice to hear they are still selling snacks to coach and giving FC customers nothing but that lousy snack basket.

 

[aredeeyou22]

nice to hear they are still selling snacks to coach and giving FC customers nothing but that lousy snack basket.

Fear not, you , too may enjoy one in the F cabin as well.... if you shell out $5......

 

[SolidCactus]

Fear not, you , too may enjoy one in the F cabin as well.... if you shell out $5......

I know. I used to always buy the meal from coach because so many times I didn't like the food choice in F (Im picky, in this case, it was never because US was serving lousy food)... AND only two times did the flight attendant say, "dont worry about it". I always paid. Honestly I could care less, on a transcon flight, when you're hungry... I'd pay $20.

 

[US1YFARE]

on a transcon flight, when you're hungry... I'd pay $20.

The next time you fly a transcon on CO in F, try the osso bucco, after the shrimp appetizer and salad...it's really good, but save room for the ice cream sundae.

 

[PHLfa88]

That would make it more difficult for some FAs to install "serving cart-shaped" swimming pools in their backyards, but that wouldn't solve the inventory shrinkage due to theft, improperly comped items, etc. That would just make it harder to steal the cash. You've first got to change mindsets.

We're talking about cheap sodas and bottles of water. On sale, I routinely pay less than $0.25/can and less than $0.17/bottle, respectively. Since longer than most of us have been alive (or at least flying), airlines have handed those items out for free to even coach passengers. Wasn't all that long ago (for me at least) that coach even got free booze. And all of a sudden the Desert Wunderkind thought that overnight, he'd bring in several hundred million dollars annually from selling these items for $2 each? Items that are nearly free when I buy them in groups of 12 or 24 at a grocery store? I know we've all heard the stories of how expensive drinks are when bought from Gate Gourmet or Sky Chef, but much of that is myth.

Free soft drinks in coach is simply an ingrained tradition, and changing that is bringing out some pushback. No surprise here.

I've been in office settings where the employee kitchen/breakroom is full of sodas and water. Ostensibly for visiting clients and meetings, etc. Yet the employees are permitted to drink them for free. Why not prohibit it or charge them a quarter each? Because that would not help keep morale where everyone wants it to be. Sodas and water are nearly free when you buy them in bulk. Charging $2 each for them (when you haven't been charging for them for decades), is gouging. Movie theatres, theme parks, sports arenas, etc. have NEVER come with free soft drinks. Coach cabins always have, and on nearly every other airline, THEY still are FREE.

Time for the castle to admit another blunder. They've gotten used to that lately, so admitting error shouldn't be all that difficult.

WRONG Dude!! I have NO problem charging for a Coke! And..are you reading this..I get NO Complaints from Pax's NONE, ZILCH! When all the other airlines see what we make selling drinks I won't be surprised if they start selling them as well!!

 

[PHLfa88]

nice to hear they are still selling snacks to coach and giving FC customers nothing but that lousy snack basket.

FC Pax's are MORE than welcome to pruchase a snack box if they want!!

 

[Art at ISP]

Nice customer friendly attitude FA88. If all your colleagues felt the way you did, it wouldn't matter because there wouldn't be any customers and you wouldn't have a job.

That said, I think the only way US will be able to keep ala carte pricing to the extent that they have is to lower fares to the point where people will buy tickets. What few elites appear to be left are being upgraded with more regularity since their ranks have apparently declined significantly, and the rest of the customer base just doesn't know better.

Price and value go hand in hand. If you can pay roughly the same fare and NOT be nickel and dimed, I think that's where people will go.

US still suffers from the delusion that the "hybrid" carrier concept will work. It may--for Airtran and those who set proper expectations from their customers and then meet or exceed those expectations. US is trying to be something its not, and they manage to disappoint a good number of customers in the process.

At some point, if they want to be a true LCC, they should either stop calling First class as such because it is not in a product sense, and just call it the big front seat, like Spirit and those.

If you're going to do something, do it right, or don't do it at all.

US has (or had) alot going for it--the best front line employees, a fantastic route network, a competitive product, and at one time they actually listened to their customers. Customer Service aimed at fixing problems, not making the customer complaints go away with vouchers.

So while it may be true that ALL airlines are going to have problems soon, I think US is going to be more vulnerable than the rest.

Happy Thanksgiving all....