Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Topless air hostesses and champagne pool parties 'could lead to British Airways scrapping flights to lucrative destinations'.


British Airways bosses fear having to scrap lucrative flights because of mounting complaints about raucous cabin crew parties at luxury hotels.

Topless air hostesses and champagne-fuelled pool parties have prompted a flood of protests about wild behaviour.

Now BA has warned its captains to control their crews during overnight stops – or the airline may be forced to abandon at least one route.

The problem is particularly acute on routes crewed by young recruits – so-called ‘mixed fleet’ which was at the heart of the recent BA industrial dispute.

A BA source said: ‘Mixed fleet crews are basically kids of 18 and 20 years old, in their first jobs on pretty low pay, who think it’s a wonderful life staying in posh hotels.

‘They pilfer champagne from the aircraft to drink in the crew hotels because buying their own drinks in a five-star hotel is too expensive.

‘Then they run amok, holding wild room parties and going topless in the pool.’

Crews on long-haul flights to the Kenyan capital Nairobi have been told the route could become ‘financially unviable’ unless they rein in their behaviour.

BA flies thousands of passengers a month to Nairobi, and the route is worth millions of pounds.

But in an internal memo sent to BA captains recently, a manager warns: ‘We continue to receive complaints from our management team at our crew hotel in NBO [Nairobi] regarding the behaviour of some of our crews.

‘In the current security environment, the current hotel is the only approved hotel available to us.

‘Should they choose to terminate our contract, or elect not to renew it later this year, the route will become financially unviable.’

The note begs captains and senior cabin crew members to ‘sensitively manage pool/room parties and any raucous crew behaviour’.

Other routes allegedly suffering ‘crew behaviour issues’ include Mauritius, Las Vegas, San Diego and other U.S. destinations where the legal drinking age is 21 – meaning crews who cannot drink alcohol in public bars are more likely to party in their hotel rooms.

Separately, BA has sent out an internal message to all crews warning they face dismissal if they are caught taking alcoholic drinks off planes without paying for them. However they are allowed to buy them under the ‘crew purchase scheme’ at cheap rates.

Although cabin crew are banned from drinking alcohol in uniform, another BA source said: ‘Those rules are only adhered to “in public”. What goes on in the hotel room is different.

‘Often when away from home, crew have room parties. Crew are able to buy cheap alcohol on board the aircraft and consume this in hotel rooms, thereby avoiding expensive bar prices. Games often played are variations on “spin the bottle”, “truth or dare” and “I have never...”.

‘The room parties often get quite wild. I have seen damage occurring to the hotel, I have seen nudity and streaking. I once saw two male crew members leaving the room party with a male pilot, and they reported the next day that they had a ‘threesome’ with the pilot.

‘In Cyprus once, crew returning to the hotel from a night out found a donkey tied up in a field. The donkey was led back to the hotel and the crew managed to get it into a lift and up to the fourth floor, before hotel security intervened.’

The source added: ‘A phrase often used is: “What happens ‘down-route’ stays down-route”, however this is not always the case. Rumours do the rounds all the time.

'The rumours are known as “Galley FM”, and cover everything from who's sleeping with who, to what plans the company has for routes or expansion and so on.

‘When away from home, crew are accommodated at British Airways' expense in luxury hotels. The agreement between the union and BA means we have to be put up in somewhere with restaurants/bars etc, therefore we end up staying in some of the world's finest hotels.’

A BA spokesman said: 'We speak to all of our hotel suppliers on a regular basis. We purchase around 5,000 hotel rooms a year in Nairobi for our crew and have received a small number of concerns from the hotel.

'We take any complaint extremely seriously and have reminded our Nairobi crew of the high standards that are expected of them when off duty overseas.'


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