Seconds
 

Stupid question-- when traveling J or F do they allow you to ask for seconds or if I ask I will just look stupid?

Can I also eat at anytime, as in don't follow their regularly scheduled meal times?

Thank you.

Don't see why not...I've asked and received seconds in Y many times :)

Big difference between the two.

In F eat anytime. J you follow a schedule and generally speaking if you don't eat during the meal tough luck.

You can always ask for seconds....in J mains are easier than plated appetizers. Although usually the loading closely matches pax numbers so unless you picked the thing nobody wanted there's a chance it's out.

F has a better chance but things run out too and frankly my problem in F is too much food not too little. Usually they have seconds or more available of caviar.

How are crew's meal allocated?

Often times, they are eating the leftover J/PEY meals.

So what happens if you ask for seconds? They check and see hopefully if there's still a Y meal left for themselves?

By the way, they always have snacks available throughout the flight. So feel free to ask for seconds of the main courses, they might be able to oblige you and it's worth a try.

But if not, there are other options for the rest of the flight. Usually a sandwich you can order, and a ramen noodle dish, and some various packaged cookies and snacks that are out on a tray for anyone to help themselves. I've slept through entire meals and sustained myself on the side snacks before.

Yup. They usually end up eating J or F meals, or the cockpit crew food if the pilots don't want everything (cockpit crew usually have sandwiches or something loaded on specifically for them, not available to pax I'm pretty sure). And....I definitely have seen FAs keeping extras for themselves, and telling pax the choice is all gone. This is a no-no, but I've seen it happen have enough anecdotes and am sure it continues. I'm talking about even the availability of a first-choice meal, not seconds.

It's definitely not a problem. I've had cabin crew offer me a second serving of caviar in F. I refused it as it was too much food.

On a recent flight to LAX on 884, I've even seen a passenger order the snack immediately after the completion of the first meal service. The snack was a hamburger! How anyone could eat a burger after that meal, I have no idea.

I finished all the caviar in a recent flight in F from HKG-ORD. The other passengers were asleep. I wondered what happened to them when they asked for caviar for breakfast...

Just ask! On CX, if you're in F or J, they almost always say yes. Try the caviar-topped eggs while you're at it, it's fantastic:

http://i.imgur.com/K2qMm5R.jpg

+1 !!

1. I would be happy to serve if you ask. The food can't be reheated for the second time in case passengers want it later. It will just be wasted. I rather it goes into someone's stomach!

2. Passengers approached me before saying they wanted to have their meals later. in FCL of course no problem. In JCL and EY if extra meals are loaded, i will try to ask for their meal preference and save it for them. (Not a must, pls don't take for granted!)

Or it can go into the crew's stomach! ;)

What's the avg life span of Y/PEY/J's meal once its been heated?

Or the crew simply take whatever they need that shall be enough for themselves and dump the rest.

A whole decade ago we flew with Air Canada YYZ-HKG (1 stop via YVR) on their old A340-300s. First leg to YVR we were told that there'll be a technical stop at Calgary (think it was a fuel diversion caused by nasty headwinds). Then the scheduled YVR stop. Afterwards as we were somewhere over the Pacific the captain told us that we'll be diverting into ICN due to a typhoon in HK. Finally got going again after a while (couldn't remember how long). At that point it should've been time for the second meal, but the crew said that it has been "expired" so they can't be served to us. And it certainly didn't help when the limit of crew hours were reached resulting in yet another diversion to TPE.

Perfect case of how hunger turns into anger for the pax.

Shocking that the Captain put the risk of running out of fuel over the Pacific above the sense of entitlement of some.

What makes you think that? :D:rolleyes: This conclusion is even more shocking than how they decided to not load additional meals during either one of the stopovers between ICN and TPE.

If you are in F they are more accommodating than you can imagine. In J they have snacks as well as the main plate. Just ask.

I flew back alone in F HKG YYZ and they had catered all the appetizers and mains so the FA said I could have some or all of the many choices available.

In F, the trick is not to think of the menu as a menu. It's an inventory listing of what's been loaded. Order what you want, as often as you want, whenever you want.

i also had flights where stuff ran out.

normally consumed in one hour.

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I think for passengers its 2 hrs max.

That does happen. If you know of something specific that you want, ask a member of the cabin crew and s/he'll try to hold some for you.

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I've had 2-3 mains on flights before :o

Yes the steak 3/4 in was a bit much...but was sooo good :D

I think the company policy is 1 hour shelf life for J meals, not sure about other cabin

Hi -

The idea of of F menu as an inventory is absolutely correct.

I took a TPAC F flight and had double caviar, soup, no salad, my own "surf 'n turf" consisting of a full lobster tail and a perfect steak (both as mains), no cheese, and three desserts of cake, ice cream, and fresh berries in heavy clotted cream.

Burp.

And I also told them to keep some caviar for breakfast with my eggs and an extra portion of the berries and cream.

Sometimes you just have to fly CX F to remind yourself how the 1% lives.

I am envious of many of the people here's eating abilities!

I am a pretty big guy, 6'4"/220 and consider myself to have a hearty appetite. However, on my HKG-ORD/LAX/SFO F flights, I have never once had the room to order a second main. Usually by the time I finish my first main, I am 90-99% stuffed and still need spare room to sample the delightful sounding desert, falling into a food baby coma afterwards and usually skipping breakfast the next morning.

(The CX F bed has been so comfortable, I have not woken up in time nor was hungry enough to sample their famed fresh made to order breakfast eggs yet. I'll need to figure out a way to get back in CX F to remedy this deficiency asap!)

I am plenty guilty of having an extra serving (or two) of the caviar, Krug, and desert though!

Guess I need to stop being such a glutton at the F lounge before my flight... next time I'll fast for 24 hours before my CX F flight so I get my money's worth by eating them all out of onboard F food!

I only HOPE that the FA's could eat the 1/2 of the HUGE angus steak that I left for them. I cut it in front of them and told them ("D" and "S") that I wouldn't be eating it all and hoped they would.
I have a big appetite but that steak was too much for me.
CX880 HKG-LAX very recently.

Only when the F cabin is not full. We always seem to have a full flight and never have such luxury.

Happened on our HKG-SFO flight in January. We did not even get our First choice! FA came to inform us the Chinese favorite appetizer only had one left and asked if we could take one of Western options. That was regardless they took the meal orders shortly after take off. We just chose not to eat until 2 hours into the flight. Then at serving time, they came to inform us only one Chinese appetizer was left! Given there were at least 2 passengers did not eat and went straight to sleep, I could only guess either they did not load the choices for every passenger, or worse thing happened.

Bummer. I've had this happen to me a number of times too. I never mind when I've been op-upped (CX FAs IME do a pretty good job of offering F op-ups their meal choices last, at least this is my experience), but it's kinda annoying when I'm on a revenue ticket they run out. Seems to happen with regularity.

I have absolutely no knowledge as to how F meals get loaded, but this is what I suspect: I think CX loads F class # of each meal based on a ratio for the number of revenue tix. Obviously, given the time lag, I'm betting they make this estimate at least a few hours (if not earlier) before flight departure. This could mean that last minute cash or Instant Upgrade awards put more people in F than CX expected, and sufficient catering for each option may not be loaded in time...I'm sure this is somewhat common especially with routes offering multiple frequencies daily. There's also the possibility that the FAs goofed up and offered op-ups choices before you, or forgot and served them your meals, or you just flew on an unlucky day and everyone wanted the same thing.

I do think CX is careful to track F meal inventory loading.

They have cut back and don't always load 6 of everything anymore!

However the Chinese options should have at least 4 as they always anticipate this is the popular option.

When I was the only F pax a few days back they loaded 1 of everything and after boarding I told the FA my order and tell them to enjoy the rest.

I wonder what would happen if people decided to upgrade in the last minute:D

CX is quite good, they will call and check if there is enough catering. If there is a 2nd pax last minute I assume for certain dishes according to their calculations are popular they will load 1 more.

I once did a paid upgrade from business class to first class at the very last minute. The manager told me that I might not get first class catering because they could not load my meals. I would definitely get either business or economy class catering.

when you say manager do you mean ground agent or ISM? what meal did you end up getting?

Airport manager. Ended up getting a mix of first class meals and business class meals and economy class instant noodle. But it doesn't bother me cause all I needed was the big huge flat bed.

This is exceptional, normally they will refuse to issue you with the upgrade.

Was it at an outport or HKIA? I'd be very surprised if it was HKG, but could see it happening at an outport.

At HkIA they told me they can still onload catering at 40 mins but of course subject to availability

yea that makes sense to me, I do think at HKIA they'd be better.

Some of the outports are terrible. It wouldn't surprise me, for example, if ex-LAX the ground staff told you they couldn't load an F meal in time even if you checked in a few hours in advance and tried to do Instant Upgrade. I've had a few bad experiences trying to use Instant Upgrade at LAX I always feel like it's a meat market. It really sucks when both CX881 and CX883 are close to full. In that situation LAX ground staff become more obsessed with juggling pax loads b/w CX881 and CX883 to some optimal calibration that will earn them kudos from CX at home than they are actually serving pax interests..if what you want to do doesn't fit into the LAX manager's view for her optimal way to balance the pax loads on those two flights then you're SOL, even if it means trying to use an Instant Upgrade from J to F. I suspect they have various KPIs or metrics CX home base looks at (I don't know for sure, but I think op-ups might be one of them), and they are very driven towards hitting those goals.

So anyway, I guess my point is I could see what RA-wannabe said happening especially if the ground staff had other priorities.

It was ex-JFK.