Meal Time Cut-offs Fixed (Maybe they're listening...)
 

It looks like there has been a systemwide change in catering for F meals. The system seems much more lax when it comes to meal time cutoffs and the PDA/online site is now showing "Lunch" and "Dinner" on many routes that were just showing "Snack." I can now see mid-con 10:20 AM departures with lunch and mid-con 4:10 PM departures with dinner. I was starting to get tired of the chicken/pasta plate, so this is really good news.

Great news if true. I wonder why the change?

I really think UA has started to listen;
After all the things we did not like, every little improvement makes us happy so I think we are going to start seeing changes we do like.

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Noticed this too. If true, thank you for listening

Maybe I am missing it one of my routes:
1330-1545 TPA-IAD still snack

However I do see it on:
1345-1723 ORD-TPA Lunch

11.59pm departure IAH-> BOG, got dinner.

Hi goldelite8, you have a keen eye and are absolutely correct. We’ve recently made some meal scheduling adjustments to our late morning, early afternoon and dinner start times. For example, in United First, you should begin seeing lunch and dinner options on short to medium haul flights (over 2.5 hours) departing between 10:00am through 7:00pm. This improvement is a direct result of customer feedback. Please keep it coming.

Shannon

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Shannon give them a BIG thanks from my stomach for me ! Thank you very much for this- more productivity at the airport instead of overpriced airport food = happy biz travelers!

Thank you for putting lunch/dinner back on 1,2,3pm ORD-SFO !

I am one of those who has sent *repeated* constructive feedback about both the quality and quantity/availability of meals in the Front cabin. In all my feedbacks I mentioned that this was *not* the place to save money. I kept repeating how I miss the meal quality from the "old days" of CAL. Perhaps someone nostalgic of these old days decided it was time to act?

^^ My upcoming 9:54am departure IAD-SFO is listed for lunch in F, which is excellent news!

I wonder what the specific cut-off times are for snack vs. lunch vs. dinner...can't seem to figure it out...for example, the 1:17pm DEN-IAH is a "snack" flight but the 2:39pm DEN-IAH is a "lunch" flight :confused:

excellent news!

I wonder if the nasty chicken and pasta will now be considered a lunch :)

I noticed this last Sunday. UA 1733 DCA-IAH with a 2 pm departure had lunch (choice of cheesburger or shrimp salad, plus fruit cup and excellent chicken tortilla soup, followed by the chocolate chip cookie in a bag), whereas this flight was most definitely a "snack" flight the prior few times I'd taken it.

Thank you for listening!

Now make sure the new PS business isnt serving Canyon Road and if there is any way to serve soup at dinner again Delta gets less attractive.

I have been booked in paid F for a trip to BOG in AUG for about 2 months and it has always shown "Dinner" for me. Same for my redeye return that departs a little after midnight.

Hopefully it will go the way of the Dodo ;)

I didn't mind the chicken and pasta after the first couple of times, but without mixing it up more often, the dish has become a bit nasty.. Would much rather have a got sandwich and some soup ^

And may we ask - why was no announcement made here after decision was made?

That would have made for free and quality goodwill this community could have spread to other biz travelers we know.

perhaps we beat them to the punch. It's happened before.

Thank You!!
 

Thank you for listening!! Hope other feedback will be heard too soon :)

Wonderful news to of United!

Thank you!

^^^^ to United for listening! I have a quick question:

Will UA reconsider the Dinner cut-off times, especially for on westbound flights between 2,000-2,300 miles or blocked at over 5 hours long that departs between 7pm and 8pm? Especially UA558 PIT-LAX that departs at 7:30pm.

My DEN-ANC that departs at 7pm shows as a Dinner flight (not sure if this is new). Sounds like a reasonable request to me. 7:30 headed west is like a late dinner for those headed out and early dinner for those headed home

Excellent first step in fixing some of the holes created by the post-2/1 changes. The chicken/pasta salad snack is no doubt an improvement over the "COld plate" but the fact that it seemed to be served on flights which formerly had full meal service was aggravating.

7:00 is on the early side as a dinner cutoff, especially for a longer flight. I think 8:00pm is more realistic for the 2,300mi+ flights.

Even some of the 7-720pm ORD-SFO/LAX flights now have Dinner...

My assumption is that the revised meal times more closely reflect pre-merger blocking. If this is the case, what was the original process which led NEW UA to conclude that minimizing meal windows was a sound strategy?

If we can understand the process, any learnings from it, and those learnings are applied to future decisions, I would feel more confident in once again booking revenue flights on UA.

If UA is looking for any more customer feedback on meals, how about bringing back proper meal service on the Hawaii routes, at the very least on flights requiring BF copays, although I would tend to think ORD could be grouped in there as well. And to go one step further, those same flight services could stand to have their Club admission privileges re-instated for premium passengers.. Any plans that you can share, Insider?

It would be good if UA can actually define "traditional meal times" on http://www.united.com/web/en-US/cont...st/dining.aspx

Agreed. Why hide the ball, United?

I have sent them ample feedback on this very question. My recommendation is simply to replace domestic first with international business first service on flights to HNL which do not originate on the west coast. The implementation problem, as I see it, is that they would need to assign internationally-configured aircraft on the ORD-HNL and DEN-HNL legacy United routes, just to keep things consistent. Until they can get the aircraft available for these routes, unlikely to happen. For now, they have downgraded the sCO flights, just to keep consistency with sUA.

Sure enough, DEN-IAD with the 345PM departure (and 9PM arrival) is now listed as dinner. Believe it or not, this regime considered this a snack flight in the past! You'd either eat your dinner at 3PM at Denver, or struggle to even find an eatery that was still open at Dulles.

As much as I appreciate the announcement, perhaps Shannon can explain why they insisted on messing with this to begin with......

SJU-EWR, 1:xx PM became lunch. And SFO-DEN at 1:xx became lunch.

In May, I had the craptastic chicken pasta on 3 out of 4 segments, and now 2 of the 3 have reverted to proper meals.

So, how much more of the COdbaUA BS can we expect to get rolled-back within the next 6 months? No, I don't believe this has anything to do with customer feedback -- apparently the numbers aren't looking so hot, and it's time to try to plug the leak of over-entitled elites flocking to AA.

Dca to ord?
 

It would be nice to see meals return on DCA-ORD. I really enjoyed my hot dinner served by AA on this route which I received this week.

I know 8:45 AM is breakfast time, but I even wish we got lunch instead of breakfast on this flight. Really.

They don't need international planes to serve the meals they used to serve on all Hawaii flights including the 737s from CA. I would love to see the old meals return, but would settle for at least the BF copay flights receiving them, or better yet, all HA flights over 6 hours (to include ORD).

And maybe they are making changes, remaining silent about them as part of an evaluation of whether they are noticed.

After all, the well-publicized roll out of the new coffee wasn't all that successful.

I would be more than satisfied with the same service as the JFK/EWR-SFO/LAX on ORD/IAD/IAH/EWR-HNL. That would bring it closer to where it was before the old CO meal guidelines were scrapped and be more fitting of the 8h+ duration of those flights.

The new EWR-IST is UA's longest European route from EWR, but it is only 58nm longer than EWR-HNL.

I was thinking the same thing when i was enjoying dinner on an ord-dca flt on AA last week.

Shannon:

I too appreciate the willingness to listen to direct customer feedback. If you really want to make a change for the better, will you please reconsider the priority of meal choices. The overwhelming majority of polled FT'ers dislike the current method. (Only 6% prefer this method). The vast majority (66%) would prefer the old UA method. Poll results are here in case you missed them. ;)

A whopping 138 people. :rolleyes:

My September 7pm EWR-TPA flight is still showing as 'Snack'