For this week’s Meal of the Week, I want to share something that I hope airlines will take seriously: soup is the way to a passenger’s heart.
I could do a post on the dozens of soups I have enjoyed over the years on carriers from around the world, but I want to focus on American Airlines today. People (rightfully) complain that food on AA has tremendously deteriorated in quality and now lags behind Delta and United.
It is a rare occasion I find myself on American Airlines and the only AA first class domestic meal I had last year was ravioli from Washington National to Chicago, a route that United does not even serve meals on. But as AA wonders why its loyal road warriors continue to complain about the food, let me offer this solution: just serve soup.
This meal is from October 2012–I got a heck of a good deal on AA.
I was Executive Platinum at the time and my upgrades cleared right at the window.
For the redeye back to Washington Dulles, one of the choices was hot mushroom soup. Sure, hot nuts to start followed by soup with croutons and two bread rolls is a carb bomb, but I remember how much I appreciated having a bowl of soup on a cold autumn night.
People appreciate something warm to eat and soup is so easy. Warm it up, pour into a bowl, and serve it. I hope we see more soup on more airlines.
This is before they changed their catering standards from the best transcend service in the industry to “just a smudge above middle school cafeteria food”
Indeed, that’s my point — AA can win back loyalty just by bringing back a bowl of processed soup.
The mushroom soup served in UA GlobalFirst is pretty good as well!