Via Matthew Klint United has made several cutbacks to their domestic first class meal service effective September 1.
In a nutshell:
- Breakfast: no more breads on flights up to 2 hours 59 minutes
- Lunch: Flights up to 2 hours 59 minutes will no longer have a hot option (both choices will be cold)
- Dinner: Loses a hot option, all dinner service will be one hot and one cold choice instead of two hot options
- Non-Premium Transcon Flights Over 4 Hours: lose a hot option at all meals (so once choice hot, one cold) and no more ice cream with a pre-plated dessert in its stead for lunch and dinner.
No More Breakfast Cinnamon Buns on Flights Under 3 Hours
In addition, “transcon redeyes (except for premium service routes) will no longer receive a hot sandwich with salad or fruit, only a snack basket.”
Here’s more detail from qukslvr619 on Flyertalk:
Flights 2:30-2:59 hrs:
Breakfast: Remove breakfast breads only
Lunch: Two cold meal options and a chocolate truffle (vs one hot and one cold option, mixed nuts/bread//side)
Dinner: One hot meal/one cold meal option (vs two hot options); offers mixed nuts/bread/salad/dessertFlights 3:00-3:59
Breakfast/Lunch: No change
Dinner: One hot meal/one cold meal option (vs two hot options); offers mixed nuts/bread/salad/dessertFlights 4:00-5:24 (exc. transcons)
Breakfast, lunch and dinner have cold and hot meal options (vs two hot-meals)
Pre-plated dessert replaces ice cream/sorbet on lunch/dinner flights
He describes this as “very similar to what” pre-merger Continental Airlines offered circa 2006.
As it is United’s domestic meal service is superior to American’s, inferior to Delta’s. At a time when they’re working to get customers to buy premium cabin seats, and while they’re certainly improving along those margins they still lag Delta, this seems strange. Project Quality all over again? It seems like only yesterday that they were touting big new investments in their domestic meal service.
“… picture descriptions…” – here is a novel idea UA, partner with McDonalds. Station an automated order kiosk at the gate so you can order/pay for your food prior to boarding. In the 20 minutes it takes to load, there is time to prep/load 300 DoubleCheese & fries w/ a large Coke. Everyone gets a hot meal! I’ll take that 2% royalty for my clever idea. 🙂
/Wm
20 mins to prep/load 300 cheeseburgers? Not exactly sure of how the logistics would even work with that. Just looking at current catering, quantity is known in advance, food is prepped in advance, food is delivered. Even then you have to unload previous catering if not an originator and most importantly is the fact that 300 orders wouldn’t come in at the exact same time because people come up to the gate at all sorts of intervals.
The problem is simple. UA wants to simplify/slash costs (remember you can make a pizza so cheap no one will eat it—yeah I’m thinking of you Jeffy); FAs want the least amount of work/performed by the max number of people (2 FA’s for a 20F cabin…yeah that’s not efficient and if 1 FA can work a RJ without an issue and get paid less); people want F service at LCC prices (people will gripe but no ones willing to spend more money)