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BA adds new feature for carbon offset
British Airways is launching an upgraded climate software solution for both individual and corporate customers, helping them understand, calculate and address their travel emissions.
The airline has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and plans to achieve this by flying more fuel-efficient aircraft, funding verified carbon offset projects to mitigate emissions on UK domestic flights, investing in the development and scale up of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and looking at accelerating the growth of new technologies such as zero emissions hydrogen-powered aircraft and carbon capture technology.
In addition to the work the airline is doing to reduce its emissions, British Airways is empowering its customers to make more sustainable travel choices by introducing the new CO2llaborate programme in partnership with climate tech company CHOOOSE.
The airline is launching two online platforms to allow customers to calculate their carbon emissions and make environmentally conscious decisions to reduce their impact on the environment when they fly.
For some time, British Airways’ customers have been able to mitigate their emissions from flying by using the airline’s carbon offsetting tool to purchase high-quality carbon offsets and sustainable aviation fuel. CO2llaborate is an evolution of this carbon offsetting tool, featuring more precise emissions calculations and a new adjustable slider to give customers more control over the amount of SAF versus verified carbon offsets they wish to purchase.
Individual customers can access the platform before, during or after their flight
Individual customers are able to access the CO2llaborate platform directly from their seat during their flight using the airline’s free Wi-Fi portal, or at any time before or after their flight by visiting the CO2llaborate platform, which is accessible on ba.com.
Customers can calculate the carbon emissions from their flights and choose to purchase SAF or carbon offset their emissions, supporting high quality carbon mitigation projects including a rainforest protection project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and an energy-efficient cookstove project in Nigeria in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The new adjustable slider feature will allow customers to have more control over where their climate contribution goes, enabling them to choose how much SAF or verified carbon offsets they want to invest in by selecting any percentage of carbon offsets with sustainable aviation fuel.
In a first for British Airways’ corporate customers, the CO2llaborate platform will also offer a dedicated climate programme for companies to measure, reduce and manage the carbon emissions associated with their business flying.
BA new Club World meals first look
Reader James kindly shared the photos and menu of his flight featuring the new Club World meal service which should effectively take us back to the pre-Covid service after over 2 years of reduced service due to lack of staff.
The meal was aboard BA175 to JFK on Friday morning.
Here is the menu:
The meal certainly looks like a big improvement on the tiny portions before:
The cheese was missing the adverted chutney, but otherwise, it looks good.
Don’t forget if you have a different menu on board to this one or try some different options on this menu you can share your experience with TLFL readers by sending your pictures and commentary to [email protected]
RwandAir to fly direct from London – hopefully, another oneworld choice in the future
RwandAir recently announced their intentions to join oneworld which would be a welcome addition for travel to Africa. Rwandair may not be on your radar for luxury travel but they are an ambitious airline with plans to get a 5* rating. They have a young fleet of aircraft with a decent business class seat with direct aisle access in a 1-2-1 configuration.
RwandAir will launch direct flights between London Heathrow and Kigali next month from 6 November 2022.
The African airline has been operating flights to London via Brussels for the past five years, but from next month, these will be replaced with a new non-stop service.
Rwandair usually offer some good value fares so hopefully that will continue with the new non stop service. Fares to Kigali start from £2216 in business class but fares to Cape Town cost from £2345 and Nairobi from £1924 which are decent prices from London currently.
The new direct flights, which are on sale now will operate four times a week, an increase from the airline’s current indirect three times a week service.
Flights depart Kigali each Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday at 23:35, arriving in London at 06:20 the following morning.
The return flight departs the British capital at 20:30 each Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, arriving at RwandAir’s home hub at 07:00 the following morning.
Yvonne Makolo, RwandAir CEO, said: “We are excited to be launching direct flights to London, which are on sale from today, due to the popularity of our current services.
“The UK is an incredibly important market for us, and we know our customers will value the shorter flight times and increased connections that will be offered by the new service.”
The airline has flown between London and Kigali since May 2017, via an indirect service, through Brussels, having launched flights from London Gatwick on 26 May 2017.
In 2020, after three successful years of operations, the African carrier airline switched flights to Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, helping to significantly improve connections for those traveling from further afield.
From its hub at the heart of Africa at Kigali International Airport, RwandAir is renowned for its excellent on-time performance, customer service, and safety. The airline has for two successive years been awarded “The best airline staff in Africa” .
RwandAir currently serves 28 destinations across East, Central, West, and Southern Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
For more information about RwandAir, or booking inquiries, please visit www.rwandair.com.
19 comments
Double beef! Seems a bit odd to have a beef starter and a beef main course on a menu with only three options? Food does look better though. And also pleased to see the removal of the egg sandwich for afternoon tea.
I agree with you about the double beef. I thought it instructive that the beef looked realistically messy, as though it was dropped in the galley.
Some of us like an egg sandwich, but pastrami? Not exactly a much requested or popular sandwich in Britain.
Why 3 gins and no dark rum, which is very popular at the moment. Just the hateful Bacardi which has no taste whatsoever and has no link to British history either.
We flew Club LHR to Male yesterday (just arrived) and the menu was the same as this. Beef starter was great, the fish was average at best. The big issue was the service; it took 3 hours for our starter to come out after taking off at 8pm – it was a complete shambles and wish we’d eaten in the lounge and gone to sleep. Lots of annoyed people in business and our even kids’ meal wasn’t being served for 3 hours. I don’t know if it’s a lack of practice or an inexperienced crew but they were all very stressed and not particularly friendly.
Unfortunately I think slow service is inevitable. It will improve as they get familiar but on the A350 for example I expect it to stay pretty slow due to the cramped galley. BA make the crew hand run everything which doesn’t help.
Flew from Montreal to Heathrow today and it was nice to get soup again as a starter, which was delicious. Service was a little slow but nothing really to complain about. Overall nice to be back into the old service and it’s going in the right direction .
That’s great to hear.
Judging from the menu pics provided above re BA’s new business class, the same mistakes are being made by the “chefs” who design these menus, [as already mentioned], that BA have this habit of menu repetition, which has been going on for years. Previously, I’ve complained about this several times, but obviously still to no avail. On a ‘table d’hote’ menu i.e., a small menu rather than an a large ‘a la carte’ menu one should never ever repeat a food item which is a basic culinary rule, for all the obvious reasons. There are also 3 veg starters and no fish item, whilst the word “roasted” appears 3 times in the starters. It also seems that they still serve chalky brie rather than ripe, which makes it unpleasant, whilst dried fruit instead of chutney makes a change. Sad though to see still no cognac and the cheapest port from the off license being offered instead of a 10 year old tawny = penny-pinching BA. They should be aware that we still have a choice of carrier post pandemic, & given the eye-watering prices we’re now paying for our tickets, and the profit announcement yesterday by parent company IAG of £1billion in 3 months to Sept., there is no excuse whatsoever!
No improvement on European services, just back from corfu , where business class was about 30 pax, I was row 6. No choice of starter or dessert, all served on tray with choice of main, except that there was no choice for me other than pasta or curry. the chicken salad had run out. As I do not like either pasta or curry, I was left with just the starter and dessert.
I.m beginning to think that BA stands for Bloody Alcoholics, no limit on top ups of what I THINK WAS CHAMPAGNE AND BOOZE, BUT UNABLE TO GET A CUP OF TEA UNTIL AFTER FOOD SERVICE,
Previous trip in first to US in AUGUST gave me same impression, lots of booze in concorde lounge but absolutely crap food.
I can understand when previously business or first was paid for by their employer that they would neck it, the new reality from what I have seen recently is that these classes are now more middle class holiday makers, who will I THINK WANT A MORE APPROPRIATE MIX of food quality, service (still good) and are not alcoholics, I REALISE IT IS EASIER TO POUR FROM A BOTTLE THAN PRESENT A DECENT MEAL, but BA needs to sharpen up , or it will lose the ‘new premium traveller’.
I agree, the unlimited booze which I never drink when flying accompanied by a poor choice of poor quality food is why I don’t fly BA if there’s a choice.
The big club cabins are definitely an issue as is running out of various food options. The only way to prevent it is to book a seat early and sit at the front.
I don’t know any European airlines that offer a choice of starter and dessert on short haul so I wouldn’t expect that to change at any point. To be fair to BA there are plenty of soft drinks that can be poured on demand. However their selection is pretty dull considering there are more non drinkers than ever now. The issue if you drink tea outside the usual times is that they have to return to the galley to make it which is obviously more distruptive to the service than pouring a drink from the trolley. However you can always ring the bell at any point to get a tea.
I made this point on another site: photos of food onboard planes frequently look unappetising, but are in fact tasty.
I agree on the point above about missing cognac, cheap port and three versions of gin.
As for a cup of tea, I was sitting in row 5 in Club on a 2h from Madrid to Heathrow 4 weeks ago and my partner asked for tea mid service and it was immediately called for by the crew using the call button to attract the attention of the inflight lead who was in the galley. All depends on the crew you get I think.
Richard is correct about the food being tasty but visually unappetising, because they use the natural ingredient called Umami, which always enhances/amplifies the savoury flavour of what you’re eating especially @ 35 – 40K ft.
Shame that doesn’t work with the port or the phantom cognac!!!
Btw the port is retail £14.99, I had a large glass of it served to me a flight to Mexico, and after two sips I’d already had enough. Probably almost certainly cheaper bought in bulk by the airline!
Flew business class from Las Vegas to Heathrow at the beginning of October 9.30pm flight. Had the dinner meal (which was awful) then for the breakfast meal it was the self same menu. Even the stewardess said she was going to mention the awful food situation to BA.
It’s a joke that they have only committed to being carbon zero by 2050 if carbon off-setting is counted as part of that.
People should be paying to offset their carbon footprint for air travel NOW. I do it voluntarily but it should be mandatory by 2030 and not 2050. Yes, this may impact on the affordability of air travel but air travel is not a right.
I don’t have any children, so I can afford to travel long haul a couple of times per yea flying business class. That’s my choice. But if families are priced out of such frequent air travel then they chose to make the life style choice of having kids.
Carbon offsetting charges should be enacted ASAP.
I totally agree with the menu comments.
As a Food Safety consultant and ex Catering student the basics are never to repeat items as they have done with Beef or repeat words such as ‘roasted’
Basics!!
Thank you for publishing the photos and the new menu (and to James for sending them in). It’s great that BA is back to normal in all cabins.
I’m looking forward to having the full service on my way back from Cape Town in December – hopefully none of those who have made comments are on my flight – the moaning would drown out the popping of champagne corks and a comfy club suite seat!
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Fabian, You seem a rather shallow fella only interested in what you want, not everybody wants the same things. Good cabin, good crew, good food,we can agree on, as for alcohol I find it unhelpful for sleep, and those necking it do nothing to make a relaxed atmosphere. It seems that the ony people who want to drink are those who abuse it, come to think of it Michele always mentions the champagne Why ?
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