HIDDY

I was surprised to see just how many special meals there are.

https://www.britishairways.com/jba/b...cialmeals.html

Ladyfliestheredwhiteandblues

There are several reasons people choose to avoid gluten. They are not always as the result of a diagnosed illness and this can cause some general scepticism about people who need to be gluten free which can be very unhelpful.
My husband has coeliac disease. It is an auto immune condition which in his case will be triggered by a single crumb of bread with gluten or by eating something fried in oil which has been used previously for frying something breaded. We have to be extremely careful as an attack causes severe symptoms for at least 24 hours and every attack causes small long term damage.
BA’s gluten free meals (when they remember to load them) have never caused him a problem. They are, however, shockingly dull and the gluten free bread roll could be used as an offensive weapon. They also seem to conflate it with a dairy allergy so he never gets real butter or cheese. He’s happy to be safe though and always carries his own snacks in case the meal is not loaded or is not to his liking.
Could BA do this better? Yes, but he’s mostly happy to not be ill! On the other hand we were not impressed with their sorry but not sorry when they failed to load his meal.

ermis177

Well, if they give a banana as a special meal, i imagine they can be thousands...

nufnuf77

Most of them are one and the same - one meal can serve 5/6 diets (eg vegan and vegetarian are usually the same, etc). as far as i know only KOSHER is truly specially catered!

EvilDoctorK

Exactly, which is why I used the phrase 'blandest common denominator' ... by all means order one if you need/want to do so - that's what they are there for - but don't expect anything exciting, it's almost always going to be substantially worse than the standard options.

Berrisfo

Really interesting hearing everyones experiences; I am fortunate to only be gluten intolerant not allergic so I appreciate some folks suggestions around sticking to the typical menu and seeking out a gluten free option from there. I'll still submit a complaint and see what happens.

I looked back at some other gluten free meals I've had on BA before; the outbound to JFK was pretty good alongside a LHR-ARN in December in CE so it's not all bad (pics below). I'll be avoiding the US special meals where possible!


CW to JFK - a little bland but good overall


CE to Stockholm in December; not sure if it was the bubbles talking but it was pretty tasty

A P Yu

Why they even bother serving two meals on a flight which is regularly 5 hours and 50 minutes still amazes me. Just do one but do it properly. Thank goodness there are lounges at both ends who need more.

JMac82

Similar experience for me and my wife with vegan special meals flying out of Miami - LHR. 'Main' meal consisted of a small portion of rice and some vegetables, no attempt at any protein in the main (on the way out the had included tofu for the main meal). Breakfast amusingly consisted of the cabin crew trying to run around and find as many cookies as they could as no breakfast trays seemed to have been loaded for us. Needless to say all contained milk/ eggs, but at least the were very nice in trying to find something for us to eat!

Filed a complaint with the website @Tobias-UK mentioned above, and received a response a couple of days later, with a £100 e-voucher, so at least that was something. Did mention how good the cabin crew had been in trying to find something suitable for us in the morning!