While Delta Air Lines and American Airlines already serve “real” meals onboard their regional jets, United has been a holdout, offering only junk food snack boxes. That changes on 01 March 2015 when United will begin to serve hearty meals onboard its regional jets, finally eliminating the profound difference between flying mainline and United Express.
Here are the details from United–
- Phased-in introduction: New menus will first be introduced on the E170 and E175 fleets beginning March 1, followed by CRJ700 and Q400 flights in April.
- Full meals on flights approximately 2:20 hours or longer: During traditional meal times, like on mainline, we will offer a full breakfast, lunch, or dinner meal service served on chinaware. Our regional aircraft are not equipped with ovens so our United Express menus have been designed with this in mind. Here are a couple sample menu selections:
- Breakfast: Fresh fruit plate served with cereal,Greek yogurt, and breakfast bread
- Lunch/Dinner: Artisinal pretzel roll filled with tangy barbecue chicken and creamy coleslaw, accompanied with a tri-color quinoa side salad. Pre-baked signature triple chocolate chunk cookies will be served for dessert.
- Light refreshments on flights approximately 1-2:20 hours in length and on flights over approximately 2:20 hours between meal times (1:30pm – 4pm and after 8pm): We will offer a selection of premium snacks and fresh fruit.
- Flights approximately 1 hour or less: Our shortest United Express flights will offer a morning refreshment service with gourmet biscotti and on flights later in the day we will offer a premium fruit and nut snack mix.
More details here. Note that like mainline flights, there are exception markets in which United serves meals in business/first class due to competetive pressure depsite being less than 800 miles. Those incldue:
- Chicago O’Hare to and from Hartford, New York LaGuardia and New York/Newark
- Houston Intercontinental to and from Mexico City
- New York/Newark to and from Atlanta
No love for Washington National or Dulles, but this is a tremendous and long-awaited improvement. By 01 April, all regional jets that operate longer flights will offer meal service during meal hours and wi-fi installation across the United Express regional fleet is also in progress.
> Read More: Impressive Meal Service Upgrades at United Airlines
Hard to believe that ORD-DCA isn’t included. Don’t they see the value in pretending to Congress that air travel can still be nice?
It’s about time!!
I hate marketing fluff. I’m not sure how a “Pre-baked signature triple chocolate chunk cookie” is a selling point. Aren’t all cookies pre-baked? It could have been pre-baked weeks (months?) ago. Information on when it was baked is only needed if it is freshly baked on board. Moreover, what makes it a signature item?
We’ll see how it is in reality. I was pleasantly surprised with the new meals on mainline.
Having flown DEN-YYZ two weeks ago on a CR7 departing 5:25p (lasting 3-1/2 hours) and being offered a box containing little more than a tiny container of hummus and a bag of peta chips in F/C is thoroughly outrageous. Weather forced a change of my flights from SIN and routed me via DEN. At least I could have dinner before the flight at the Fat Tire brewery outlet before heading to the gate, but the level of service on UAX has been abysmal in this regard for too long and it’s good to see some improvement. Just hope for those in the back there’s an expanded menu on such long flights.
have been waiting for this a long time! This is a HUGE improvement. United has, on their mainline fleet, excellent meal service (in my opinion better than AA or DL), but it’s probably very tricky to serve food at the same level on those regional jets.