tstauck

LAX-SBA last Friday 4/20, 19 min wheels up to wheels down. Still offered water service which was nice.

NY-FLA

EWR-SYR 4/24; 1 Hr 25 mins; 194 miles. No turbulence, no service, no announcement. In fact, FA so lazy, she did not move her butt from her seat, even to do a pre-arrival safety or compliance walk-through.
What I find striking is the world of difference between the advertised " If you’re a member with Premier 1K status, you'll receive one free alcoholic beverage and one free Choice Menu food item when traveling in United Economy on any United- or United Express®-operated flight system-wide, subject to availability on your flight." and the reality; nothing, absolutely nothing, not even an ice cube. How an entity could waste its efforts on these few good initiatives, and then leave implementation so obviously to the vagaries of each individual employee's initiative escapes me.

smxflyer

It's so variable. Flew SYR - IAD on 4/18, offered water only. BWI - EWR on 4/21 and FA handed out pretzels and had trays of ice water and cranapple on ice. EWR - SYR on 4/21, FA did a pretzel and water service. All 3 flights with roughly 40-45 min flight time.

I've had flights from SYR-IAD/EWR where the service was as you described and have had flights with full beverage and snack service. No consistency.

laxmillenial

So, I can't justify why there was no beverage service.

However, for Choice Menu food items, there has to be a minimum length. Heck even LAX-SFO is 338 miles and we don't get Choice menu food items.
The UA website states this: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/con...nomy/menu.aspx

basically, if you don't want to click, your flight must be 1.5 hours or greater for catering of these food items to have occurred. I suspect this is round-trip average. This is another thread on this forum that I cannot find but there was another link that showed that your flight must be 2 hours or greater. So, unfortunately, short flights don't qualify for food.

joe_miami

There's no excuse for the FA's general laziness, but this is a clear case of the "subject to availability" you cited.

Also, there's no way EWR-SYR is 85 minutes, unless you got stuck circling or something. That flight is maybe 30 minutes from takeoff to landing, and that's the part that matters when it comes to in-flight service.

NY-FLA

Thanks, I'm well aware of all that you stated. The "subject to availability" language I quoted makes this pretty obvious for Choice Menu items on most regional flights. I wouldn't think that language was intended to also apply to beverage service. Would you think that "subject to availability" applies to the pre-landing cabin walk-through from the group of employees primarily here for our safety?
IME, 1K's can get snack items on request even on the shortest of flights. Tough to do when there's no-one to request it from.

joe_miami

Once it became clear the FA wasn't going to service the whole cabin, if you really wanted a drink or snack, you should have hit the call button or gotten up and asked.

NY-FLA

The time I quoted is the gate to gate time per UA. Wheels up to wheels down was 33 mins per Flight Aware. Reasonable to conclude that the service would have been no different if the flight had circled long enough to fill out a 3 hour block. The 1K benefit UA published page I quoted specifically includes UA Express flights. 1K benefits aside, if United felt that if the typical flight time of~ 33 minutes wheels up to wheels down was too short for beverage service, with no extenuating circumstances, ie turbulence, why would United publish for flight status , United Economy: Beverage service ?
The great divide between what's promised and what's provided is simply sad.

joe_miami

The entire "divide" here is three sips of a beverage during 33 minutes of flight.

Are you sure you didn't miss an announcement that there'd be no service due to catering or turbulence? The FA not even doing a pre-landing check seems like a fireable offense if she hadn't been instructed to remain seated.

CMK10

My usual short United route is IAD-RDU. Service post April 1 was the same as it's been on that route for several years now: "this flight is too short for a full beverage service but we will be serving water".

Funny, BWI-RDU on Southwest isn't too short but I digress.

WineCountryUA

The additional 31 miles makes all the difference.