So the soup is sometimes served, but now in a tinier bowl like the demitasse cup from BF?

How cheap can they get?

What was wrong with the old meals?? :confused:

You must be a CO person. As a frequent UA flyer, talk to me in a month or two when you get tired of it. ;)

It's actually a bit different than the old UA pasta/chicken plate.

The new one has a fruit bowl (UA's didn't), and UA used to offer a choice of sandwich or the pasta/chicken plate. It seems there is no longer a sandwich option on pasta/chicken flights.

Shows you how many of these things I've had...

On a EWR to MCO flight this evening, the soup was still there except it the quantity of it was about 25% of what it used to be. I think that the CO china has been replaced and now they have much smaller dishes. The soup and fruit bowel dishes were much smaller than I have ever seen, and consequently so were the offerings in them.

The breakfast served in the morning on my MCO to EWR flight has been reduced in size and quality. They used to serve a hot breakfast with a cheese omlette, a piece of canadian bacon, a piece of turkey sausage, and some sort of potatoes. All in all not a great, but not too bad a hot breakfast meal plus fruit and yogurt. Today I was offered eggs or cereal. I chose eggs expecting the usual breakfast, and instead got this soggy pastry pie thing with supposedly some sort of eggs in it. Totally tasteless and unedible.

So if $ismek thinks he is improving the in-flight product as his PR segment prior to the safety movie that one is subjected to at the begining of each flight tries to convey, he is dreaming. The domestic FC food offering has seriously gone down hill this year.

Yeah, you know how it is; anything new, we all---PAX and crew---gobble up voraciously simply because it's something different (not only talking about food). I'm sure my review won't be so raving after I've eaten 450 of them.

At least it has good flavor, plenty of protein and carbs and is a filling plate.

Agreed. While it gets old, it's certainly reasonable for a cold meal, and it gets the job done if you're running between flights and don't have time to get something.

And UA did have variants in the pasta -- Mediterranean on farfalle (olives, feta), Asian (mandarin oranges, sesame dressing), and sun-dried tomato on tortellini (fresh mozzarella, s.d. tomatoes) -- so they did change it up from time to time, so maybe we'll see some differences over time.

Transcons exEWR
 

Anyone had any experience exEWR? I dont know if IAD is being treated differently than EWR but the lunch I had today out of IAD was basically the equivalent to the standard dinner exIAH with the addition of a salmon appetizer and ice cream. Appetizer, salad, entree served all at once and only two choices of entrees, no menus. Wondering if EWR is still being treated differently or is downgraded to the "new" standard. My suspicion is it has been aligned in which case I'm not a fan.

Remember the "premium" trans-con debacle a few years ago? Not the UA premium but the CO version which was EWR to LAX or SFO only (I think). Those select few were the only ones that got the true trans-con meal experience while all the rest got standard long haul treatment. Remember your howls of protest that got it changed back?

That program has returned.

I was on CO2 Wednesday night.

The sausage biscuit for breakfast wasn't bad though. Better then just fruit like normal.

Dinner service was definitely a downgrade.

They didn't get the "don't screw with our meals" hint the last time?

I guess we need to start howling again. Next Tuesday will be my intro to the new meals and I plan on snapping pics and distributing my shrunken-headed dinner over social media channels to get people talking.

What is it with the new leadership team and this constant nickel and dime attitude?

Hey, this ain't IBM - you're running a service business - remember that.

If you're going to go down this route, please be sure to be specific on which areas were impacted, otherwise they'll tear you apart by countering with the upgrades:

From the CO perspective, many short hauls that were no meal now get a snack basket. And redeye cold plate flights that were just meat and chese now have the more substantial pasta/chicken plate.

From the UA perspective, the transcons have improved catering with appetizer and sundaes.

You'll need to be precise on the areas of downgrade -- UA mid-con hot breakfast replaced the omelet with an egg sandwich/mcmuffin, and UA mid-con flights departing between meal times now have the pasta/chicken "snack" plate.

I'm sure you can fill in the CO nuances. I try to stay off CO metal whenever possible, so I can't help you much with those changes.

My late evening IAH-LAX should get the new snack plate - that's a plus...but my dinner hour FLL-IAH traditionally is soup+hot item (cheeseburger, wrap, etc) plus packaged brownie or cookie.

This is the first change I'll be watching.

Just flew IAH-ONT in F. Had warmed nuts, then choice of cooked chicken pasta or beef + mashed potatoes. Both entrees came with fruit bowl, bread, and salad. Followed with a cookie.

Simple- its not really a new team persay. I'm gonna guess that all those changes you hated that were reverted were brought to you in part by Smisek and team- Only difference was, he wasn't fully in charge and there were others that had veto power.

Now with the merger guess who's on top? And/or the people who looked out for the good of the pax have either been replaced or have been vetoed by our very favorite person.

Let's hope they get the message again... Missing Mr K already.

Tried to make this point earlier, but probably wasn't clear: I just had two mid-con dinners (between ORD and SFO) that I felt were significant improvements over recent standard fare on this route on either UA or CO metal. Both meals seemed pretty well-balanced nutritionally (protein, carbs, vegetables, fruit, reasonable portion sizes) and tasty.

In recent years, UA had made some effort to balance the food groups, but poor preparation or ingredients often left the food bland or dried out. CO was way ahead in the taste area, but their meals (e.g., cheeseburger, cream of cream soup, cheesy bread and butter, and a factory-made brownie square) seemed designed to induce heart attacks. Except for serving the UA cookies instead of the CO sundaes, I felt that this was one area where they did get the merger right.

Dinner had green beans-no starch. Dinner was a piece of chicken breast. Lunch was no veggies.


Ummm...5th grade reading level.

Dinner = NO SOUP
Lunch = SOUP

The fruit bowl is easily 15% of the size of the old bowl. NO SOUP at dinner in it-fruit.

However-Cereal bowl at club = LUNCH SOUP bowl = dinner salad bowl w/no soup.

Find it hard to believe it was miscatered out of EWR....but then again...