And AA only lets you choose one of the two meals they would have offered you on the plane anyway. And it doesn't work perfectly, as they've lost my pre-order on a couple of occasions.

On a PLH route, AC offers 4 meal choices:

• Beef (sometimes lamb)
• Chicken
• Fish
• Vegetarian (usually a pasta with too much spinach)

The US carriers, including AA, also have a tendency to not have anywhere near that diversity of choice (e.g. sometimes it's chicken dish #1 or chicken dish #2 ). They also usually don't over-cater, and may only load a small number of one of the dishes - I was on a UA international flight recently where they catered 12 chicken, 3 beef, and 1 pasta for 16 J seats. By the time they got to me in 2E, it was chicken or nothing.

​Neither system is perfect.​​​​​​

If you sit in 2A/2C, your odds of getting what you want are quite high.

As for your attitude on "full fare", others have already largely addressed that, but I will say this: why do you think it's more fair for the airline to start orders based on where someone is sitting in the cabin? Others may have purchased last-minute (truly full fare) for $2500 and be sitting farther back than you. Should they then be entitled to a meal choice before you?

Once in J, AC generally does not discriminate based on how one got in to J (the main exception being the SSL at YYZ). They've decided that priority meal choice is a small perk they can offer to frequent customers - most of whom are spending many thousands of dollars a year with AC - to help retain their loyalty. (If you want to get in to a measuring contest, I've probably spent $35K on AC and *A partners so far this year)