FlightNurse

I really dislike when airlines do this, really, you can't add 2 minutes to the published flight time...

cesco.g

Probably more of a scheduling decision, than "let's make sure we don't need to serve a hot meal" issue.

Plane-is-home

They did it on at least the SNA and YYC flights and only this year. I believe that's exactly what they are doing. Avoiding meals.
Anything but morning flights are blocked longer and get a meal

cesco.g

It that's the intention, should they not reverse it and provide only breakfast meals, given those are lower costs?

1kBill

Choices were Salad with chicken or turkey pastrami on rye. I had the salad which came with a fruit bowl; the pastrami sandwich had a small side salad. Dessert was a cookie.

For some reason, I can't insert a picture, but take my word, the chicken portion was on the tiny side.

cesco.g

Indeed, lunch flight EWR-LAX BF p.s. had the same menu. I choose the turbot (fish); I praised the FA for getting it cooked just right: moist, flaky and hot out of the oven! ^

PTahCha

The turbot is probably my favorite main course at the moment.

The big chunk of goat cheese appetizer? Not so much.

764toHI

Was on UA488 last night (8:40pm departure ex-LAX)

Appetizer and salad served together - goat cheese thing with apple/fennel salad
Main course - flatiron steak, some chicken dish, and butternut squash manicotti (was decent, had a fair bit a sauce)
Dessert - gelato sundae served from the galley

Appreciated the quick service by the FAs on the short redeye flight, I think from start (10 minutes after we hit 10,000 feet) to finish it took an hour.

PsiFighter37

From last weekend, on an sCO 752:



Menu for the day. I would have tried the ravioli, but I think someone on here mentioned it was a bit skimpy. I opted for the turbot, as every time I've had turbot on a UA plane, it's been pretty good.



Goose IPA and the nuts



I actually liked the salad here a lot. Healthy amounts of goat cheese was nice, and the balsamic vinaigrette (in that tiny container, the same one that was previously endless amounts of olive oil) was excellent as a dressing. The smoked chicken appetizer was okay as well, although I probably would have liked it better as a hot dish. The roll was served at a perfect temperature, although I'm not quite sure why the FA was calling it a sourdough roll



Turbot itself was good, particularly with the Asian-style BBQ sauce it was marinated in. I don't recall the turnips being all that distinctive.



Ice cream - first time they didn't drench it in chocolate syrup in a while

There was the standard-issue hot cookie served prior to landing as well.

FWIW, I flew a red-eye back (1 AM departure) LAX-EWR in J, and there was a burger offered as a mid-flight snack. I think a lot of people said they were going to have it, and then of course everyone fell asleep for the entire flight. I was disappointed that they didn't have it ready to serve as a pre-arrival snack/breakfast of sorts as an option.

Paul510

Hey-

Does this really happen? When booked it was listed as "Refreshment" now it's "'Dinner"

Details- UA460 on 05/17/16 SFO-YVR, departs 7:53pm, 2:15 minute block time.

I guess it does help to fly from a HUB sometimes? International Flight?

If true it will be really nice to get a full meal on such a short night flight, since I will not be in my Vancouver hotel until probably 11pm.

Thanks,

Paul

qukslvr619

Having worked in scheduling, I can honestly tell you that I never encountered a situation whereby catering would call us up and have us make changes to flight times so that we wouldn't have to serve meals.

That being said adding 2 minutes to published flight time seems trivial but when you factor in crew costs (increase your scheduled block hours), potentially blow connections (because incoming flt wouldn't meet MCT), show up as a longer trip duration in GDS (perhaps not appear at the top of a screen when a trip is being booked), adjust gating/flow issues at capacity constrained or slot-controlled airports, etc. 2 minutes over a month of a schedule can add up to millions.

The bottom line is the schedule is made, catering probably receives it, dumps it into Excel, runs a few macros to capture exception markets, and then its assigned meal codes, and then put into GDS. I'd like to think that someone would go in and see that a IAHXXX trip that had lunch departing at 1200 now only has a snack because its leaving at 1202, and change it back....but unfortunately I don't think they are that proactive unless its an exception market.

sfo

Meal service until 2000, you just made it, assume you are flying in FC, however I don't remember being offered a choice of two different entrees, but maybe I was.

fivesixseven

I had the same dish recently, but yours looked like it was a completely different dish! And - in hindsight - they didn't give me the turnips.

Plane-is-home

It's still very suspicious that this happened exactly the day of the caterer change.

kmersh

To my brain, I cannot see catering initiating that sort of change, but I could see whereby somebody (probably a bean counter) would instruct scheduling to change the time of the flight to save my money by not having to cater the flight. After all there are set time for catering, so if one moves a flight time to just outside the window, than UNITED does not have pay for catering.

To my simple brain, catering does not care how many flights they cater, they will cater whatever they are told to cater.