I was flying KEF-EWR last week in economy. The flight, like many Icelandair flights to the U.S., is scheduled to leave at 5:00 p.m. I was seated in 36D on a 757, that is, on the aisle pretty far back - several rows behind the bulkhead at the third set of doors. It was the seat I had requested, chosen because there weren't many aisle seats still available when I booked.

Food in Y is buy-on-board but Icelandair encourages pre-purchasing, which I did. So had many other people. In general, the flight attendants serve both purchased drinks and purchased food from carts, but at least on this flight they chose to roll the carts forward of the bulkhead and serve the rows at the back directly from the rear galley. (This doesn't seem to be unusual. I was connecting from Atlantic Airways, which serves the front rows directly from a front galley and begins cart service at about row 10 in a 319.)

However, the FA did not approach every row for orders. Pre-orders of one menu item, sliders, were served almost immediately after the seat-belt sign went off; drinks to purchase were offered to those passengers at the same time. Then drinks were offered here and there, not to every row. I was acutely aware of this because all the people around me (one large family occupying 8 seats in two rows) had ordered sliders; I had ordered chicken.

Quite a while later the chicken meal was served to other passengers, not to me. In the interim, another FA offered water and cups for coffee or tea (the hot beverages to be served later) to everyone in the back. Eventually I pressed the call button, and my inquiry about my food order caused a mild panic. It was eventually determined that it had mistakenly been placed on one of the carts serving the front, so that the FA serving the rear rows never saw it. Eventually it was found and then she also took my drink order.

I can understand how a mistake like this would happen. What I didn't understand was why drinks, and food that wasn't pre-ordered, were offered only here and there, not at every row. I don't have a comparison from the EWR-KEF flight, where I was in 39C, because it departs at 8:50 p.m. and almost no one orders food.