Last week I was in London on business and I had my family join me. I was on my company paid ticket and they were on award tickets.

I got upgraded and gave my wife the boarding pass for BF. She decided that I had done this enough times and gave it back. Nice of her. I insisted, she insisted, finally I sat there.

I was approached for the meal and I said "Really I don't eat food on the plane, can I just give it to my son?" He's 14, eats non-stop.

The FA said "that isn't permitted". I kind of laughed because I knew that asking any question would mean a no answer from a UA employee.

I said "nothing for me thanks, I will come to the galley if I want water."

The purser then comes around introducing himself and says "you wanted to give your meal to your son?" I said I did. He then said "I will take care of it, we could at least keep our 1Ks happy with little things like this."

I am sure its not SOP or Protocol but it was nice. They gave it to the wrong person but that's a different story.

Question is, should this be something that isn't possible or should this be something that they would happily do?

It seems to me that this is something that shouldn't be permitted in theory but that the Purser, and the Purser alone, should have the authority to over-ride. If it were permitted generally, it would make chaos of the meal service and could be a major nuisance for the FAs.

It looks like the crew handled it very well.

I thought about the "chaos" and then remembered how many BF seats there are vs people like me that would be in the situation and figured its probably really very one-off.

extend it to drink service, other food items, .... and things could be out of hand.

What, denied him at first a simple request and then gave it to the wrong person? What exactly did they handle well?

Totally one off, hardly ever seen anyone not take a meal...

I wonder whether FAs might be reticent to do this because they're worried about opening a can of worms with other passengers in Y who are not served a meal. If everybody was mature and FAs could be uniformly counted upon to deal well with the few who would no doubt remain immature, I imagine there would be no problem, but I think neither is the case.

In a perfect world, of course, this should be no problem.

I remember the days when you could ask the FAs in F to get my friend in Y a drink and when I offered payment, they refused and just brought back whatever they wanted - those were the days - actually, happened just five years ago...

My sundae, the FA served me mine and assured me that she would take him one in a plastic cup. ^

Last month, I was on a business trip to Europe (ORD --> LHR, FRA --> ORD) where I was in C and the family was in Y.

On both legs, I asked my FA to send back a glass of wine to my wife, and they happily obliged. Later, both FAs proactively offered to send back sundaes for my kids

Last year from IAD>DXB in Y. I was chatting with the girl next to me as we were both watching the same movie. Turns out her mother was working the flight and they got us hot food and wine from up front. It was really nice though we did get a lot of odd looks from people wondering why we were 'special'.

It all seems nice until some other kid sees OP's kid eating a sundae or a steak or whatever it is and asks how come he's not special too.

I'm fine with an individual crew member taking on the burden if they want to, but there is no particular reason they should.

Of course, on FT, the better question is what you should seek by way of comprnsation if the kid's steak is overdone !

I don't think they should, even though I've been a beneficiary.

Specially when you're in Y getting nothing, having F/As fawn over NRSAs (ususally) or others and bringing them stuff from premium cabins or for free doesn't do much for the overall experience.

this is such a funny topic. On one side you have the crowd that lives and dies by the "rules". On the other side, you have those who see no wrong. I fall on the later side. I've been the beneficiary of it and I've been on the wrong side of it once.
I've always thought, if its not a big deal, then why make it one. A few times I've been in Global First and the kids in Y+. I've taken them back cookies or sundaes. I have two kids, so I'm really not taxing the system by bringing them back a sundae. Although in this UA climate, they may only have enough ice cream to serve exactly the same number of FC or C passengers.
So for me, if its not a big deal and the team on board goes for it, then let it be.

On the return leg of my flight, I took the sundae from the FA in the galley to bring it to my kids personally. There were at least a dozen that I could see in the cooler, and this was after service was done...so it looks like inventory control hasn't quite gotten that severe yet.

Dammit! Jeff or his minions read FT. "CUT BACK ON THE ICE CREAM."