Yes, that was the explanation provided by the flight attendant on a recent BA flight from London City to Dublin.

To start at the beginning – the weather in the morning of the day I was travelling had been misty and this always has an impact on London City Airport. The morning saw planes being diverted to Southend and Gatwick as they could not land. The knock-on effect is always awful as BA runs a special fleet from City and the airport is too small to fly in alternative planes.

Scroll forward, I was booked on the 6pm departure to Dublin. This started off being slightly delayed, then very delayed and ended up finally being cancelled.

The BA app (screen shots above) had better information than the staff at the airport and by checking it regularly I was at the front of the queue for rebooking. Near gate 2a at London City is an unmarked desk which I know of old is where BA handles it airside operations. The staff were friendly indicating that some passengers had been rebooked whilst others had to go through immigration, collect their bags and see the ticket desk if they had not been rebooked. The later flight was not full but was delayed itself. I was one of the lucky ones, even keeping my seat assignment.

Once the gate was announced we all piled down to watch the passengers off load from the delayed inbound and deal with the ground staff who were adamantly taking rolleraboard luggage off passengers. Once we got on it was clear that there were four rows of Club, with about 11 passengers seated. The ground crew brought on additional meals, but it turned out that they were hot food and could not be prepared in time. With only 4 cold meals the flight attendant had decided not to serve anyone as it would be unfair. She did her best by putting the snacks from coach on to glass plates from the Club trays.

We left even later than shown above, and got in to Dublin around 22:20. I had to travel as I was on the 7.30am departure the next morning back to Heathrow and then New York and I wasn’t missing that trip!

I wrote to BA complaining about the lack of catering, and they have provided 5,000 Avios as compensation.