American Airlines Revamping Food Offerings Next Month

American Airlines introduced new domestic first class lunch and dinner options in November.

Mid-February they’re refreshing breakfast and also all three meals on regional jets. There are several changes to international snack items, and a couple of notable mentions about domestic economy food for sale.

Changes to Coach Food for Sale

American’s partnership with Zoe’s Kitchen will see three new items: a Continental Breakfast Box, Valencia Chicken Sandwich and the Turkey and Pimento Cheese Wrap. This may be an unpopular opinion, but pimento cheese is disgusting.

Meanwhile the “Flight Bites” snack box has been replaced by “Power Bites”

Grass-fed beef jerky, cheese spread, fig spread, cheese crisps, artisan crackers and chocolate almonds.

I genuinely don’t get the purpose of “grass fed” beef jerky. An animal’s environment and diet affects the taste, sure, and a steak – especially one that’s only lightly cooked – is going to show different flavor profiles. But how on earth does this manifest itself in beef jerky?

New First Class Breakfasts

Domestic first class gets new breakfasts starting February 13.

New First Class Meals on Regional Jets

American’s regional jets offer different meals since they lack the ovens to provide hot food service. That’s true, even, of Embraer ERJ-190s which are part of the mainline fleet. That’s a leftover from US Airways, and when management was running that airline they even removed seat power from planes that offered it. They weren’t going to invest in ovens if they didn’t need to.

Indeed US Airways elites were hungry before the merger.

Breakfasts on regional jets will offer the following new entrees “as well as replacing the cinnamon bun in the bowl with a cinnamon rugelach.”

Here are the new lunch options which are offered along with new salads that started in November.

Dinner is completely revamped with eight options.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. Anything that gets rid of that horrendous cinnamon roll on regionals is a positive. Hopefully that regelach fares better in maintaining some semblance of softness.

  2. The mention of pimento cheese bring back horrible memories of tasting that stuff as a kid at summer picnics.

  3. Many of these options just seem weird. Do the mainline fruit entrees have any cereal or anything?

    Why can’t the non-cereal/fruit plate regional breakfast options (I assume the other options are cereal or fruit plates) have meat? Only two do. Why not just add a piece of turkey to that breakfast croissant?

    And I don’t understand why lunch which should be lighter would be a sandwich (or salad) whereas dinner would be a cheese plate or essentially a cold appetizer plate or a salad. A sandwich with chips seems like a heartier option.

    I don’t understand AA at all.

  4. And regional jet meals (despite the lack of ovens) continue to be head and shoulders above the hot meals served on mainline.

  5. Good point about the beef jerky. I have some grass fed leather shoes and I can barely tell the difference.

  6. There is nothing new about the Power Bites box…I’ve been having it every week for months.

    Also grass-fed animals have different balances of omega 3 versus omega 6 fatty acids, so that is one of the main purported benefits. Regardless, the jerky tastes quite good.

Comments are closed.