Nuts, and You
 

UA flyers seem compulsively obsessed with the temperature of their nuts, or their existence at all. While warm nuts are nice, and nuts altogether are nice, it doesn't make or break my flight. Are nut-compulsions active issues at other airlines? I've much preferred my flights on Lan where in F, I get a little thing of cold nuts pre-departure with the drink, then canapes with the first inflight drink - screw the nuts.

The obsession with UA passengers and their nuts and their relative temperature when stuck in a long metal tube makes for a more interesting topic (for me, anyways) than the nuts themselves.

Discuss

i think we could have a field day with this...but i'm not sure how. (it's early in hawaii.)

I think you're nuts.

I didn't believe there was an obsession, until I did a seach for "warm nuts" and "hot nuts"

There are currently 209 threads that mention "warm nuts" in the UA forum compared to 205 threads in the AA forum. This means that 0.46% of all UA threads and 0.58% of all AA threads mention "warm nuts".

Surprisingly the AA forum mentions "warm nuts" significantly more often that the UA forum (p=0.014, chi sqared). :eek:

ahh...but what about "hot nuts"?

I was working that out. "Hot nuts" appear in 87 threads on UA, but only 25 on AA, so UA mentions "hot nuts" significantly more often (p<0.0001, chi squared).

If you look at either hot nuts or warm nuts, there in no difference between AA and UA (p=0.89).

The conclusion is that UA has more of an obsession with hot nuts, whereas AA prefer discussing warm nuts, but there is no difference with the overall obsession with heated nuts.

I can't believe that I just wasted 10min of my life doing that - I need a life ;)

ah, but what about cold nuts?

or as I read this morning on another thread, salty nuts?

I think it is cool that you did non-parametric signifigance tests though...I would hate to think that either we or the AA's had obsessions with nut temparature that were normally distributed across a continuous variable... ;)

(Not bad for a 400th post, either)

Clearly nut temperature is a very personal decision. Are we that far away from nut warmers in each seat that would allow each passenger to heat (or cool) their nuts to their desired temperature?

This would also solve the BYO nuts issue.

If you added on "soy nuts" you'd get a lot more hits on AA. They're long gone now, but for several months they seemed to fill up about half of the ramekin dish. Now we're back to the warm nuts we love there, without soy nuts (just had some on my DCA-DFW flight) :)

Tom at DFW

nuxomania
 

COOL- I love that thread!
There is another important nut feature to be investigated. Over at the LH forum we had some discussion ("cut of service") that in LH F the nuts were not anymore served before takeoff.
There is an important difference if you have NBT (nuts before takeoff) or NAT (nuts after takeoff) status. NBT is a F feature, NAT means C. NNA (no nuts at all) is reserved for the rest. Should be printed on the boarding passes.
On my recent flight JFK-FRA I got a small cup of -cold- macadamias, before takeoff. Thus, at least on this route everything was comme il fault. In 2003 and 2004 my LH F flights were all NBT (a mixture of -warm- salted nuts was served). We could do some stats on the delay between entering the cabin and receiving the nuts. That would be more sensitive than the dichyotomic NBT/NAT thing.
By the way - I had my very first macadamias back in 1993 in LH Y, served cold in a amall bag (AT).

It's my hope one day that UA serves warm, unsalted cashew nuts on PS flights between JFK and California.

Why on earth do they waste money putting all those other nuts in the bowl? They go uneaten anyway right? :D

Better yet, UA should do away with nuts and save the money. :p

I love my airline; but on my terms. :o

Unfortunately my obsession with nut termperature is 87. Perfectly normal, and perfectly continuous.

In all seriousness, warm (or hot) nuts are to me more a signal of a certain level of service, rather than the temperature of the nuts themselves. When warmed, someone took the time to put them in the oven and heat them up, knowing that a majority of pax appreciate it. Same thing when the FA takes the time to preheat the coffee cups. This same person probably knows that no one will complain if those same nuts are slammed down cold on the tray or if the coffee cup is cold. It is one indication that someone cares about customer service, and I for one appreciate it. Hence, my fixation on the temperature of said nuts.

Now, can we talk about my pet peeve, cookies that are heated and then served with the rest of the meal, meaning they'll be cold again before you get to them?

AHA! So NOW, I suppose...
 

I have a partial answer to my earlier post questioning the cause for the ~10K difference in quantity of posts between the AA and UA forums:

it's the NUTS!

Leaving aside the obvious ambiguity of the above, I'll add an observation probably latent in the issue of warm(er)/hot/cold nuts; doesn't warming them improve the taste of nuts? Aren't we told that at altitude and in super-dry cabin air, our sense of smell (and therefore of taste) is diminished?
So the unspoken complaint then, is that "these (unheated) nuts don't taste like anything."
Let's have the physiologists weigh in, or at least a few EENTs. The psychiatrists ... :)