Should more airlines offer à la carte meals in economy class like KLM?

Economy class food on long-haul flights can be relatively basic. Airlines like KLM offer an à la carte meal service, where you can purchase an upgraded meal prior to flying.

Aer Lingus used to also offer this on transatlantic flights, but it was quietly dropped at some point. I wonder how many people order these and whether it should be rolled out across more airlines.

KLM’s À La Carte Meals

The Dutch airline offers five different meals you can purchase before your long-haul economy class flight. These range in price from €19 to €30, which is pretty reasonable.

First up is the Italian meal. This has antipasti, Pollo alla Pizzaiola with sides of truffle fregola, dried figs, and extra virgin olive oil, Zuppa Inglese and Spa Touch Lemon drink.

Next up is a tasty sounding Indonesian meal. This has green tea noodles and tempeh, beef pedas, hijau rice, sambal, and fried onion with a side of rujak, a dessert of coconut pineapple and spekkoek, plus the same lemon drink. Vegetarians are catered for as well, with a salad of beetroot and goat’s cheese, vegetarian biryani with grilled veggies, cranberries, tahini, and extra virgin olive oil, lemon cheesecake and, of course, the lemon drink. If you’re travelling for a special reason, you can get what’s called the Celebration meal. This has Cava, a prawn and tomato with a splash of cocktail dressing, beef, truffle, and asparagus with Jacob’s Table Cracker and extra olive oil, a cheese platter and a dessert of raspberry and champagne, with Ferrero Rocher. Tasty! Finally, there is a seafood meal called Ocean. This has green tea noodles and lightly smoked tuna, a poke bowl with salmon, beetroot salad, and dried mango, with soy sauce on the side, lemon cheesecake and mango juice. All of that looks very delicious and I daresay I’d like any of them. I think it’s great that KLM do this and it would be interesting to compare these to the normal offering on board.

Overall Thoughts

The questions remains, should more airlines offer à la carte meals in economy class? I think they probably should, as some people would definitely pay to have a nicer meal on board.

Apart from Aer Lingus, who no longer offer this, I am not aware of any other airline that does this. Do you know if anyone else does? I’d love to know, of course.

What do you think of this concept? Would you pay extra to get an upgraded meal on board when flying economy class? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Patrick Cardinal via Wikimedia Commons.
Meal images via KLM.