ft4lyf

Based on reports here - It looks like India flights in business get one option of Indian vegetarian meal, one pasta option and one meat option (chicken seems to be most frequent).
But, what i noticed is that even for India flights we are not able to pre-order "vegetarian" or whatever.

nsoltz

Just booked EWR-TLV today and booked kosher meals. This was always offered on the UA TLV routes but not on others. Needed to speak with a phone rep about some complications with the booking and she mentioned to me that kosher meals are now restored throughout the whole system. Finally some good news about inflight service even if it does affect a relatively small percentage of flyers. And unlike American which I used to fly, UA didn't charge $25 to speak with an agent.

ekwang

Yep, understood. I guess it was more of a question of, when meal choices are fully restored, which would even be the closest to low sodium. But maybe that's moot question as it could be a while until full meal services are ever returned.

emcampbe

India flights typically get an Indian-style veggie option in both Y and J - it�s the market - where a significant amount of population in India are vegetarian. Not sure if it�s the case anymore, but UA flights to FRA (at least in Y) always used to have an Indian-style veggie meal as one of the options - found this out when they screwed up my wife�s order for this, but it was a regular option so she ended up ok. Apparently this is due to the amount of connections via FRA to India. Not sure if this continued through COVID or not.

interestingly, UAs special meal options were always pretty slim pickings, and not always �on� IATA standard definitions. For example, typically, a Hindu meal could have meat, and Asian veg would be the Indian-style veg option. However, UA dropped the Asian Veg option I don�t know how long ago, and ensured the Hindu meal was vegetarian (IIRC, last time I checked, my wife�s meal which had to be ordered as Hindu via UA was coded as AVML - which is for Asian vegetarian). But if you are connecting to another airline you have to be real careful. I made sure to go to LHs site last time to make sure her order was properly for an Asian Veg there, as if marked Hindu, almost certainly would have been a meat option on that segment.

wpcoe

Low sodium meals used to be offered: NSML (actually is "no salt meal' but is what was used for "low sodium").

dutta

Has anyone traveled economy on UA 2 (SIN-SFO) or UA 1 (SFO-SIN) recently? What are the pre-packaged meal options? I'm vegan and anxious about the possibility of no proper meal choices on the 15/17 hour flights! Thanks for your input.

WineCountryUA

The only special meal presently offered by UA is Kosher, but that may change in the next couple of months

thebakaronis

I flew ORD-FRA a couple of days ago. One of the 2 standard choices in Y was butter chicken (the other was some kind of vegetarian pasta).

Special meals on UA have never been anything better than mediocre. I gave up ordering special meals years ago since the meals I ordered were often worse than the standard offering on many counts: taste, nutrition, carb load, etc.

abaheti

I actually was a fan of the Asian veg (Indian ) meals on domestic UA in first and was always impressed (one day I had breakfast on one leg and lunch on another and got appropriate and tasty Indian breakfast and lunch). The bland pasta thing never did it for me.

FlyingfromDC

Just read this story about UA special meals returning in Q1 2022 https://thepointsguy.com/news/united-special-meals/. United told TPG, �We�re aiming to have the others available sometime in Q1.. [we�ll] keep you posted as our timing firms up a bit more.�

Well, it�s Q2 now, so clearly Q1 comeback did not happen. UA website makes a promise that �Asian vegetarian meal (AVML), gluten-free meal (GFML) and vegan vegetarian meal (VGML) will be reintroduced in Q2�2022.� https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...g/special.html

Are the rest of them just gone for good? The one I�m missing as a parent is the child meal, as there is huge waste involved in serving an adult business/ first class meal to a young child on an international flight. The child meals in the past were perfect in quality and quantity, and much cheaper to UA (typical meal was chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes etc.)

tartanguru

I was able to select an economy Vegan meal for a SFO>LHR flight on the 12th April.
The other available options were Asian Vegetarian, Gluten Intolerant or Kosher - so not the full range

My LHR>SFO flight tomorrow on the other hand, had no special meal options other than Kosher.

WineCountryUA

That is a rather old report, for a couuple of months, UA has been stating on their website
No timeline for other meals

thesmiler

A pax next to me was getting a special veggie meal (I think VGML) on my flight on the weekend, so it seems there is some way to order a VGML now. The flight attendant also noted they were back pretty recently.

HNLbasedFlyer

What is the difference between a special veggie meal and the veggie meals they already offer?

WineCountryUA

Vegan vs vegetarian (can include diary , eggs, cheese, ...)