FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - AA meal order by flight direction & time zone change 09/2014 - no FEBO
Old Aug 20, 2014 | 1:45 pm
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sdsearch
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Originally Posted by sluggoaafa
FEBO will be ending at the end of the month.

FAs will be obtaining meal preferences by direction of travel.

I'm sure this will be just as confusing as the old movie/CBS days as movies were suppose to be shown based on the same criteria:

If there is a change in time zones, take meal preferences:
- Eastbound: FWD-AFT
- Westbound: AFT-FWD

If there is no change in time zones, take meal preferences:
- Southbound: FWD-AFT
- Northbound: Aft-FWD
So now we need a new acronym. FES? (Front Eastbound Southbound, with Back of course being in the leftover directions.)

Originally Posted by dmsdfw
That makes quite a bit of sense, because isn't that roughly how the flight numbers (even vs. odd) were assigned before they messed everything up and started using the same flight number for both directions on some flights.
And that's exactly where I've seen increased FEBO-not-followed issues lately, when the same flight number was being used in both directions.

At first glance, it seems a bit confusing, what if a flight is basically "horizontal" (close to due east or close to due west) while staying within a time zone? But then I realized, those flights are probably all too short to have meal service anyway.

Of coruse, there are alternate ways they could have done it, but no one way would be simple (without permanently biasing against one end of the cabin or the other). For example, they could have said that if the airport code for the departure airport is alphabetically higher than the airport code for the arrival airport, it's forward to aft, and vice versa. (For example, LAX-DFW would be forward to aft, while LAX-ORD would be aft to forward.) That wouldn't require looking at a map, it would only require knowing where you're flying from and where you're flying to (plus how to alphabetize!). And it would also (like the method they chose) automatically mean cabin direction reversal when a flight flew the same route in the opposite direction.

Last edited by sdsearch; Aug 20, 2014 at 1:58 pm
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