Yesterday evening, SEA-ANC in paid F: the final leg of my return flight home from AMS. It's been a long 23+ hours of travel up to this point and I'm hungry.

There's no meal being served in First (big surprise) this evening , just like all but a handful of the 60K+ worth of flights I flew with them in 2007. AlaskaAir, of course, knows full-well that many passengers will be hungry; and therefore sells snack boxes in Economy on every flight. The contents of the snack box aren't bad, just so long as one doesn't confuse it with, err, actual food.

When there's Famine in First, I occasionally ask for (and receive) a snack box from one of the FAs. Yesterday evening however, I was handed the box as if it were some sort of secret dispatch and was asked to not tell anyone I was given a snack box. 'What?', I asked.

According to the FA (whom I know and have no reason to disbelieve) a memo came down from management a few days ago instructing FAs to no longer give snack boxes on request to passengers in first class. The reason for this is that -- wait for it -- it costs AS money to feed their F pax. The FA was told something along the lines of it taking 15 snack box sales in Economy to pay for a single complimentary snack box given to someone in First Class. The FA said that 'something' food-wise was being planned in future for F pax, but for now...

No Snack Boxes For You!

Not to belabor the question, but what the hell is wrong with AS? It's bad enough that they starve us in F when they know full-well that many of us Alaskans are making connections and have had no chance to eat beforehand, but to order FAs to deny us a barely edible Box-O-Crap(TM) when we're desperate enough to ask for it is just wrong.