This has come up before. There was a general view around a year ago that pre-flight dining at JFK has been the victim of some unpleasant cost-cutting. Everyone used to say (look back at threads c.2007) that pre-flight dining was much better than any food you'd ever get on the plane and that was certainly my own experience then, but definitely not last year.

It sounds like it has now got even worse. I'll be experiencing it two or three times this summer, so I'll have to make sure to fit in a hearty lunch in Manhattan before each return flight. [Trouble is, on my last two visits to New York, I've got to bed the (Sunday) night before my (Monday evening) flight at 2pm (sic, i.e., Monday afternoon) and 10am respectively, so this will require a major schedule change for me.]

As someone else commented this week (Raffles?) it really makes no sense for BA to boast how the shiny new T5 cost over £4bn yet they scrimp and save a miniscule fraction of that in soft product costs seriously tarnishing their "premium" image on the ultra-lucrative JFK route.

How did this come about? I have no idea, but next time we're saying how great it is they got rid of all those faceless managers without any impact, just remember that one of them may well have been the East Coast Pre-Flight Dining Quality Control Chief.