Unless I am sitting in the premium cabin, I don’t really expect great airline food. Or even good food.
In fact, my expectation is that it would just be an average, consumable meal.
My Recent Meal Onboard
I am not saying that I expect ALL airline food to be bad. Some have actually been quite good. In fact, I still remembered that I had an oh-so-good Caesar salad meal on United Airlines once. Granted, it was a pay-for-purchase, but meal service was not included and my growling stomach beckoned.
On my most recent flight experience on Delta, things had been going well…that is, until the food service.
There were three meal options: chicken, lasagna and something else. The chicken was my preferred choice.
You probably guessed what happened next.
You know how flight attendants served food from the front and the back? I was sitting in no man’s lands. By the time the cart rolled around, the flight attendant had already run out of my preferred choice. “That was the last one”, she said.
“I’ll take lasagna then”, I responded, mildly disappointed.
Meal in Pictures
Here’s the thing. I am grateful for the blessings of food, so I generally loathe to complain about food, unless it’s just bad.
So, I got this meal onboard:
I can’t honestly say it wet my appetite.
I generally like salads, but not this one. The lasagna – still mildly warm – tasted OK.
I picked up the bread happily, because you just can’t go wrong with it. I took one bite and the bread was so hard to chew. Was it sitting somewhere for a long time?
Thank goodness for the biscuits and the brownie because they were the highlights of the meal. They settled nicely in my stomach in no time.
Overall, it was a rather unfulfilling meal.
When the snack portion rolled along, I had higher hopes. It was marginally better. The grapes were good as was the breakfast snack. The lone strawberry wasn’t very fresh.
I don’t normally eat yogurt because I just don’t like the taste of it. I tried it again and it was the same result.
Here’s an idea 💡
Most airlines contract with food services to provide meals onboard an aircraft.
Wouldn’t it be nice if airlines share the meal choices ahead of time for customers to preview? Or capture passenger’s preferences at the time of booking or dig through existing stats to ensure that the popular choices are adequately stocked?
Or do they not care at all because of the perception it won’t add to the bottom line? Is that assumption really true? I’ll bet there is a lot of existing big data that can be looked into.
Because if I had known that was going to be the main course for the 7+ hours flight, I would have skipped it and opted to purchase a heartier meal and more snacks at the airport instead.
At least for me, it would have been better than feeling like I’ve wasted food.
The (US) airlines have embraced mediocrity for so long that we can’t even reasonably expect something decent to eat in economy. Then, I read blogs on which flight attendants complain about their customers’ reactions to the “food” they serve. Probably, the ingredients used to prepare an economy meal are neither the best quality nor the freshest. Combine poor components with seeming inability to use a microwave and profound difficulty in serving the meal as soon as it’s nuked, and there’s a recipe for the crappiest meal on the planet. MAYBE if the poor, overworked FAs TRIED to cook the little trays properly and didn’t let them sit around the galley, they’d taste better. The airlines pretty much know how many chickens vs. lasagna vs. mystery meat that their pax want; stocking a disproportionate number of the cheapest to produce meal saves a few dimes for the poor, struggling airlines. I have absolutely no sympathy for US-based carriers. Based on their treatment of their customers, the “service” provided-whether by phone, email, or in person- they don’t care about us either.
“At least for me, it would have been better than feeling like I’ve wasted food.”
you don’t have to “feel(ing) like” you wasted food. you did.
That is …a fair point.
I tried not waste food when possible but part of my point was that if they had allocate meal options better, I wouldn’t be stuck with a meal option that I wouldn’t normally even ask for (because I don’t particularly like lasagna and I still need to eat something as it was my main meal that day).
Still, fair comment.
I was stuck with that lasagna on Delta too! Sat in the last row of economy….
Was that your choice or did they also run of your preferred choice?
They ran out of the chicken I wanted! It was not a good lasagna haha!
It’s a coach meal. Why would you expect something different?
I expect coach meal, but I’d also expect to have a shot at my meal choice. I didn’t even have that because the airline ran out of that option.
I don’t even like lasagna much but I needed to eat something. It was my main meal that day.
That’s the difference.
They not care at all simply because they are lazy. They were paid only after the door closed. So managing meal order or suggesting meal based on common passenger preference is not even on their wildest imagination.