My friend has started flying USAir when he moved to PIT, his flight PIT-BOS was in 8am ,he said that there was no breakfast served at all! Only juices were avaliable. I wonder if they lost the meals? Or something more serious?

Al

PIT-BOS is a quick flight I don't think they've ever served breakfast on it, except maybe in first.

USAirways will base whether or not to serve a meal on time of day, and length of flight. As PIT-BOS flights are set for a little more than 90 minutes of flying time - it probably doesn't meet US's requirement for how long the flight'll be (seems to be 2 hours) before they'll serve a meal in coach (I'm assuming that's where your friend was sitting as First has a snack on that flight). Remember, they've probably padded the flight time a good bit, and so there is likely to not be a whole lot of time for the FAs to serve the entire plane. Now if he was in F and still didn't get food - could have been an inability to get the food loaded.

I'm sure passengers on a short haul would rather leave on time than wait for a small breakfast snack. I don't think it's anything remotely serious. If he has a real concern with the lack of breakfast - he ought to drop a line to their customer relations folks. Or he ought to grab something in the food court at PIT before boarding if he has time.

Such cheapies! PIT-BOS is not exactly a leisure route, where no food could be expected (e.g., DL Express is beverage only).

CO gives everyone a snack and beverage between IAH and DFW (flying time about 40 minutes). Even when the flight is full, everyone gets served.

And, no, CO's IAH-DFW flights are not constantly late due to catering. They (along with everyone else, BTW) cater the flight before scheduled departure, not after everyone has boarded.

Just to make it clear - what I meant by the "passengers wouldn't want to wait" note was that if in any way catering was causing a delay on a short haul - most folks would choose the departure over the food.

I've walked onto enough flights to see catering do its thing during the turnaround and even during early boarding. I've always wondered if anyone ever had to take a delay for catering (wonder how that would show up in FLIFO). My understanding of most airlines' system for determining amount of meals loaded is dependent on: 1. Number of confirmed passengers say a day or two before; and 2. Load history for the flight - especially if its' carrying a light load (which explains why sometime you'll get upgraded to first, and be told, you'll get the coach meal thanks).

I understand the PIT-BOS and IAH-DFW comparisons - but every airline seems to do it differently. I seem to recall that ol' Delta will give you the express beverage service (OJ or lemonade) on short flights - no meals beyond nuts or pretzels.

Just fly BA (or most European carriers) on a flight of similar length (e.g. LHR-EDI) and you'll get the full hot meal - whereas on most American carriers, the cold mini sandwich is all you'll see. Look at it this way - Bob Crandall (IIRC) figured out how much it would save AA if they took out one (1?) little olive (or other timy vegetable) out of the salad. American carriers are not concerned about domestic meals in the least (except on those transcons - premium services after all).

Flew Chicago-Philly at 6AM the other morning. 2 hour flight. Snack only, in First, yet. They do what they have to do.

I've flown the early PIT-BOS in April and confirm there was no breakfast. Wouldn't have been a problem serving it as there were less than 20 in the back of the F-100.

Originally posted by CLTFlyer:
Just fly BA (or most European carriers) on a flight of similar length (e.g. LHR-EDI) and you'll get the full hot meal

Seems to be less so, or they change the catering on weekends. I flew LHR-AMS-LHR over a weekend March last year. All BA served (in the back) was snacks in a box. Not much different than what US serves when it deems to serve a snack (on the CLT-FLL/FLL-PHL runs.