I believe that you get a full hot dinner in First Class and in coach you get a hot sandwich and a cookie. The way they assign meals makes no sense to me except that it's purely motivated by competition. For instance, on our SEA-ORD flights they have a hot sandwich basket in coach for the 4.5 hour flight. We compete against three other airlines in that market, nonstop that is. On our LAS-ANC flights we serve a hot sandwich and a cookie, as in the ANC-LAX market. Both of those flights are scheduled for dinner time departures and are longer than the ORD flights. These days meal service (what there is left of it) is purely motivated by whether or not we have competition and what it is they're serving. These days, not too many other airlines serve anything so it's easy to justify skimping on the meals. The only airline serving free food to Alaska these days, other then Alaska, is Continental - and they only offer one flight a day in the off season and maybe one or two more in the peak season, so not much competition really.