Thanks for posting and welcome to FT!

Please allow me to apologize on behalf of passengers who unfairly blame the flight attendants for the airline's failings.

Haven't flown through DEN since this started, but that's awful that you should be suffering as a result of UA's incompetence :(

I still can't fathom why they can't communicate something like "our kitchen facilities are being renovated" or whatever. Couldn't this just be in an "operational update" like they seem to enjoying sending out about the lounges in ORD?

Ha, when does any meal look like that? A representative picture doesn't make a minimum. Read the reports in this thread. We have over 20 pages of them now. Are customers generally getting at least a choice of entree plus a side and dessert (when applicable)? Yes. That's UA's published minimum. Not meeting "expectations? Likely. Deliberately so or some kind of fraudulent action? No.

Holy smokes. *Checks for cheap DEN meal flights*

Unfortunately what you received is the equivalent of the new lunch "snack". It's lame.

The "deliberate" part is where your complaint goes completely off the rails. If it truly was deliberate, there would have been no cause of the cuts and they wouldn't limit it to a local issue. And again, in general they are meeting published "standards". You continue to confuse your "expectations" with actual "standards".

Again, the only thing UA is guilty of is not widely warning passengers beforehand that the catering on their flight may be affected and giving passengers some remedy instructions if they wish to have a pre-flight solution. If they would do that. there's little else to complain about.

Not sure why you're arguing with everyone. Your last sentence is basically what we are faulting UA for - nothing else. We have expectations on food in the F cabin and those expectations are based on UA's dining descriptions, as well as our experiences in UA's front cabin (in the past out of Denver and currently standard on other, non-DEN-loaded flights). UA is not catering to the expectations and they need to send out 1) a notice advising of such, 2) reassure the current situation is temporary, and 3) an estimate of when things will get back to normal. They also need to let passengers know what they can expect currently on Denver-catered flights so that the passengers can plan any adjustments to their eating plans.

Believe me, I have absolutely nothing but respect for the job the flight attendants do. I not only made it clear it was not their issue, but they handled it with class and professionalism. So much so that I handed out one of my compliment cards. My heartburn is exclusively with the GA that knew the situation on my specific flight and yet gave me and others bad info. Just tell the truth. Stuff happens and we deal with it. Just let us know the story and we can plan accordingly. Instead the entire FC cabin got their BoB choice and and nothing for the last 6 hours of the flight.

Well I think some of us are also faulting UA for choosing the cheapest possible "solution" to this problem.

Classless is a better word!

That was for three A fare meals, two breakfast, one lunch.

Exactly. They refuse to deal with their customers in an open, honest and forthright manner. So much for Oscar's attempts to change the customer care culture at UA.

It’s for sure spreading. My last 6 flights from YYC to DEN (catered in ORD) hat the prepackaged cheese too, flights listed as dinner and blocked at 2:50. No second choice.

I think the fear is that if they come clean, they will lose sales. They also have a credibility problem now. If they said "we will have this fixed in a week" would anyone believe them?

My fear now is that United thinks we'll get used to it and they can keep the lowered standards and spread them across the system.

Last week when I flew DAY-DEN-LAX, I skipped the meal on DAY-DEN, thinking that the Denver food situation had finally been fixed. Unfortunately, I was offered the carb fest choices of cheeseburger or pizza on DEN-LAX. If I had known beforehand that things really hadn't changed, then I would have done the chicken + salad greens meal offered on RJ 175 flight from DAY.

It would be nice if United went into a little more detail about this under the Amenities tab for the flight details so that customers could plan accordingly.

Great, but that is in no way clearly communicated by United. If this is a change to the service on the flight they have not made that clear. So they are either bad a doing so or they are being intentionally confusing. Noon time flights leaving Denver are listed at ~2:50. Here is the text from United's North America premium cabin dining website:

"Snacks are available on breakfast flights under 3 hours; A full meal service with two entree choices is available on breakfast flights 3 hours or longer; A full meal service with one hot and one cold meal option is available on dinner flights"

There isn't even a description of lunch. The definition of snack on United is not clear. For the breakfast flight SFO-DEN a "snack" is still a hot meal so why shouldn't I expect that on the lunch fight?