United has partnered with illy to provide coffee in its worldwide network of airport lounges and eventually all flights. Great concept, great company, but how will it taste? I’m pleased to report that it tastes wonderful.
I was on a dreaded 3hr redeye from Los Angeles to Chicago last Friday and landed at O’Hare at 6am exhausted. I had worked through much of the flight and only managed a 30-minute nap. I noticed in the United Club that illy coffee was available, including in the coffee machines that dispense espresso and cappuccino.
Curious, I dispensed an espresso and noticed immediately a very nice crema at the top of the cup. I took a sip…delicious. I ended up having two.
To understand why this matters, you have to understand how bad United’s coffee was prior to illy. Houston-based Continental had cut a deal with local distributor Fresh Brew (dubbed Fresh Poo by United’s frequent flyers) to supply coffee and that had continued post-merger with United, replacing the Starbucks United had offered for years. This was horrible coffee. Truly horrible.
So not only is the new coffee an improvement (that was a given), it is actually very good and that is a good thing, a small thing United has done to show that it is trying to win customers back. I look forward to illy coffee available onboard United flights starting in June 2016 and hope that United will invest in machines for onboard coffee specialty drinks like cappuccino and espresso.
@ Matthew — Worked on a red-eye? Dude, enough; get some sleep!
Let’s make it clear – AA also uses Fresh Brew.
And you never hear the kind of complaints you do on UA.
Sometimes I think UA would be better off firing the old tulip fanboys as customers.
I think Illy is a great upgrade, but would have rather had better wine. You can bring coffee on board. You can’t bring wine.
@Greg: I don’t drink AA’s coffee either.
@Greg, the AA folks, like the CO folks were, are just used to terrible coffee. For the pmUA flyers, the Fresh Brew was a serious downgrade and, combined with other idiotic penny-wise cuts and the generally grumpy way the ex-CO management treated pmUA folks, just happened to be one very visible thing that caught wind and took on symbolic value. That one of Munoz’s first actions was to fix the coffee indicates it was a real problem. On pmUA, I never bothered to spend money on coffee in the airport to bring on; on current AA, I do buy coffee because it ain’t good.
@Greg – what Arun said. It’s all about what you’re used to. I’ve been with AA for years, and haven’t really paid attention to the coffee because it’s always been the same. Yeah, it’s bad, but if you fly AA, you expect bad coffee to be part of the drill. The problem at UA is they switched from something better to something bad – THAT you’re going to notice, and be ticked off about because it’s just one more data point confirming that the new UA stinks. I can pretty much guarantee if AA decided to switch to Illy, then 2 years later goes back to Fresh Brew, you’d see the same level of outrage.
The state of the art in compact espresso equipment has moved forward so much that I wouldn’t be surprised to see such gear on aircraft — not just because it would be a nice perk for first and business travelers, but because it would be an easy “upsell” for coach passengers. I think way more casual business travelers and tourist travelers would pay $5 for a latte than for an awful beer. Much more labor intensive for flight attendants, but that probably wouldn’t stop them.
UA has Specality coffee makers on their sCO 772 and some 764s. I wish they’d put them on the domestic aircraft!
@FUTUREUAFA: Unfortunately, United decommissioned those machines during the Smisek era. Hopefully Oscar brings them back online.