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Decided to take the EWR-SFO...

They kept the old CO transcon service but with the upgraded glossy menu.

Footnote says "EWR-SFO/LAX" so the other EWR transcons got downgraded.

PPTP's info is correct but no alarms on this flight.

Be sure to complete the post-flight survey
 

Everyone who is actually on a flight with downgraded or less-than-desirable service - food or otherwise - should also complete the flight survey afterwards and indicate VERY SPECIFICALLY what was lacking and what improvement is being requested. If the meal doesn't contain enough protein, or the fruit bowl is too small, or the soup was cold please BE SPECIFIC. If a flight from 9:45 a.m. to 12:55 p.m. does not offer a meal and you think it should, state that it clearly operates over the lunch hour and should provide full lunch service. The more feedback we provide, the greater the chances of positive action resulting.

Short-haul upgrade?
 

Just got off the 7pm LGA-ORD...this meal seems to have been enhanced somehow, amazing for a 733 mile flight. It had the UA midcon service of two choices (shrimp salad or...drum roll please, the CO cheeseburger), soup, side fruit salad for the burger, and then a cookie to finish it off. An actual enhancement! ^

Just got back off of a SEA-IAH 13:30-19:42, 4:12 in the air 1,874 miles and was served the cold snack plate. Pretty weak for a flight that takes off in the afternoon and lands at almost 8pm.

Was served a pasta salad with chicken breast on top. Crackers/cheese, fruit cup and a packaged brownie. Chicken wasn't too bad, but the pasta was gross. I'm happy eating just about anything, but the pasta wasn't cooked properly and when you bit into the pasta it was more like a formed paste than a noodle.

The new meal website doesn't list what "meal time" means anymore. I would think that the SEA-IAH flight counts as meal time somehow unless the line is landing before 6pm at origin.

Also, had no in-seat power or personal screens either direction on this 4+ hour flight :/ 753 on the way there and 738 on the way back. Both were every seat full.

Just flew on IAD-SFO.

No printed menu, everything was served on one tray, including salad, the seafood appetizer (which was literally a ramekin with a small piece of smoked salmon and three (3) capers) and white bread roll.

Dinner choice was cannelloni or chicken cacciattore. Chicken portion was smaller than the old UA chicken meals, but sauce was clearly added after heating (CO style) vs. being cooked in the same plate (UA style). Sides were carrots, beans, and some gnocchi.

Dessert was ice cream sundae.

Later in the flight was the traditional UA snack basket (pop chips, Toblerones, bananas, etc.)

Overall I'd say it's a net upgrade because of the ice cream, but overall nothing spectacular. I was sort of hoping for CO-style transcon service.

Here is the transcon EWR- SFO/LAX and PS meal...usual suspects from the CO era but on the United plates...

http://i797.photobucket.com/albums/yy253/sfonyc/60b74a2b.jpg

Chicken Osso Bucco was delicious and a generous portion. One of the best mains in the sky.

http://i797.photobucket.com/albums/yy253/sfonyc/28a87ee5.jpg

The enhancement to the service is the UA snack basket, and they specifically say "help yourself" at any time on the menu, leaving it on the counter in the galley like on international flights.

http://i797.photobucket.com/albums/yy253/sfonyc/d65549f6.jpg

And they go UA style listing the $9 wines

http://i797.photobucket.com/albums/yy253/sfonyc/32093ca0.jpg

Flight attendant comment about the UA plates "they have a strange grey circle on them, we thought it was dirt and tried wiping it off."

Overall...what we remember from CO now also on the JFK PS flights where UA flyers will recognize the main course setup as the big plate used for first class mains - a nice upgrade for folks in biz on those flights.

But....

Starter could be improved vs Delta as could the poor wine selections. A cheese plate option would also be nice.

Things to consider for UA/CO 2.0 in a year or two when the dust settles.

It looks like breakfast in FC has changed as well, my last 2 domestic trips had the UA scrambled eggs and croissant instead of the biscuit, the fruit bowel and yogurt bowl was much smaller. I miss the strawberries and Mango. The ham has been gone for at lest a few months now.

One thing I hate when flying UA is they provide you the meal before the beverage, hopefully this was just a one time event.

Probably a one-time event, that's not typical

Here's the deal. Times are approximate since they officially go by miles.
(B)reakfast (L)unch (D)inner


<1 hr: biscoff or pretzel

1-2 hrs: scone or snack basket

Short--2-3 hrs: (B) 0500-0914 (L) 1100-1259 (D) 1630-1859

Med---3-5 hrs: (B) 0500-0914 (L) 0915-1259 (D) 1500-1914

Long---5-7 hrs: (B) 0500-0914 (L) 0915-1459 (D) 1500-1959


All times in-between are a cold plate (except snack basket 2000-0459 on short haul)

Thanks for the info, good to know. Bit of a shame that the lunch cutoff has moved from 10am to 9:15am because I've preferred UA breakfast in recent years and have sometimes picked my flight accordingly. Then again, lunch seems to have improved with recent changes.

The one thing that still seems off is the lunch time gap between 1pm and 3pm on medium flights. I frequently take flights around that time from the west coast to ORD, which are in the 4 to 5 hour range, and find meals awkward. Do you eat lunch at the airport, and then the snack seems too filling to eat as well, or just go hungry for a few hours and eat on the the plane? Arriving in Chicago at 8pm or 9pm and getting home an hour after that makes for a late dinner, especially if you did not eat the snack on the plane. At least for medium haul flights, they should really take arrival time into consideration as well.

wow, i had a hot cookie on DFW-IAH in F this morning...that was kind of a surprise for a 45 min flight :)

and so we sell our souls for a hot cookie when we could have had lobster:confused:

We are all of us slaves to $misek

Here is my report from a FLL-IAH flight.

We had a choice between a chicken salad or chicken wrap - no change from before.

Instead of bagged nuts served with the beverage, we received a small (and I mean small) ramekin with warmed nuts. This is a step up, but geez, what's with the size issue here?

The meal came with what I can only interpret as a demitasse of soup. The bowl shrunk, and even then it was barely half full - the quantity was incrementally more than the BusinessFirst appetizer demitasse. The quality changed - less flavor, more watery. This was not a step down, but a major stumble.

The chicken salad was different - less chicken, but more lettuce and new vegetables. The overall quantity was larger, even with fewer and smaller chicken pieces. The salad was served with two packs of dressing and a bag of croutons that were so big and hard, I was afraid to crack a tooth. This was a small step up (more quantity), but a bigger step down (less chicken), and an overall step down because the reduction in chicken is nothing but a nickel and dime exercise and is off-putting.

No dessert served with dinner, but prior to arrival, a fresh baked small cooke (white chocolate and cranberry) was served - I say this is a neutral thing. A step up would be a plated dessert. A step down would be no dessert....but there was a reasonably sized fruit bowl, which some people might consider a decent dessert...so I guess the interpretation is up to the individual here.

I had the cold plate before, and it was served on my IAH-LAX segment. Overall the new cold plate is a step up - more (and healthier) protein, the pasta is somewhat decent, you still get cheese and crackers and the old brownie from the CO dinners....and some fruit. Now why can't they take the chicken breast from the cold plate and put it on the dinner salad? Who knows.

So far, I can say there is no reason to light torches...but I have a FLL-DEN flight coming up next week which had a different dinner option under CO...I'll see what changes are afoot there.

EWRSAN
 

Had same meal as week before on IADSAN: Chicken Cacciatore or Canneloni...with 1 less entree to choose from and the overall meal downgrade it feels like I am more or less eating the same thing. They must only rotate meals once a month but I could have sworn there was more variety in the past.

Crew was good and had the chance to chat with them for a while and ask them about the service changes. They said this was the first transcon they worked this month and they actually called catering on the ground because they thought with only two entrees they were catered wrong. Told them about the changes and they said while it makes the service for them easier (fewer courses to prep), it definitely was embarassing given the length of the trip and the market to be serving something similar to a mid-con.

Also found it interesting that there was a guy in 3B who would ring his call button every 10 minutes or so for water refills...FA's said that it was typical of the UA FF's to do this. The F/A's did make it a point to come through about every 20 minutes or so I did think it was sort of obsessive or the guy could have at least got up.