I came across this article from 2 years ago. Any recent updates? Would be great if we could pre order meals.

but I guess that involves actually planning meals and holding vendors accountable to providing in advance..

https://milecards.com/1588426350/uni...ays-available/

You can pre-order a cheeseburger, but if seated in the rear of the aircraft, they may run out before they get to you!

The most reliable pre-order is to buy your meal in the terminal and carry it on.

All the food is so gor may that there's nothing you wouldn't want to eat. And so it follows that pre orders are wholly unnecessary. So simple.

Well, you know the problem with a "why" question is that you can keep on asking those questions forever, to the Nth degree, and still never be satisfied. For example, I could tell you that:

1. The catering menu planning software cannot be integrated with the passenger service system reasonably easily by UA's app team, or
2. The flight-specific meal choices are not standardized enough to allow for any kind of consistency or predictable meal choices, or
3. The UA commercial development team doesn't believe it's enough of a differentiator to throw their weight behind pushing for such an idea, or
4. UA's management doesn't view IT improvements as core to its customer service strategy, or
5. UA's web team are too busy keeping the website barely functional for the over-complicated reservations functions as it is already, or
6. ... on and on.

Where should we stop?

If it is really important to you - whether it be pre-boarding or meal pre-order, why not just fly the other airlines? It just isn't important to UA.

Personally, my opinion is you got a nice perk of lifetime Plat at 2MM, I got lifetime 1K with over 3MM - but at the end of the day, they could care less about me if I stop flying - I love the nice perk - but I'm sure they want over $12K PQD fliers (which I still am) who like the flying experience as is.

You know why I dread flying Delta (I do, only First when I get a deal) - is a few people have pumped them up and for me it gave me high expectations, I don't get it - I've personally not found Delta any better or worse.....

It seems that UA generally does not see its catering as a differentiator. Their natural inclination is to cut there, only restoring service when really pressed to do so. As such, they are hardly going to invest heavily in meal pre-ordering.

I don't think AA's meal pre-select is all that great of a feature in my experience... I'm batting a .500 success rate on it in the last several months. One flight was mis-catered and the other had my chicken rice show up as beef rice. In the end I didn't care, I just have low expectations when it comes to inflight food anyway. Truthfully I'm usually not really hungry anyway because I've usually just had my fill on snacks and drinks at the lounge or had a work related lunch or dinner. Rarely am I counting on an airlines meal service for edible sustenance. (international is a different story though) I understand that some might value this feature. For me, as long as there's some whiskey in the galley I'm happy.

UA is slowly playing catch up with features other airlines offer (i.e. UA rolling out their Polaris soft/hard products), but immediately copy-catting features like meal selection might make them seem to be just that: copy cats going down a path just because the other guy did. I'm sure if it was economically feasible or overwhelmingly in demand they'd be all over it. Also, I think fixing internal problems have been more of their focus than product innovation and refinements. That certainly has been time and money draining for them.

I like the AA system and it has always worked for me.

But, it is not a service diferentiator for me.

I would not consider flying or not flying UA because I could or could not order a specific meal.

That may answer the "why" question because UA may believe that there are lots of people like me out there.

I can't wait to pre-order which snack item I take from the basket.

I'd like to pre-order a specialty cocktail (Manhattans on an E145 anyone?), but even UA doesn't have the coordination, IT systems, and skillset for that. Sorry.

Lucky for everyone UA doesn't have the ability to even let me get my vegetarian meal when I already have the choice selected. I believe out of 20 something segments I have flown on in the past 3 years where I was on UA metal and able to have a meal I got it I believe twice. So preselecting a meal sounds rather difficult for them.

Do you think they could actually deliver it, or would it just be another perceived negative?