Starting later this month, United Airlines will again offer Champagne or Prosecco onboard and pour wine from larger bottles, another step in the slow return to pre-pandemic service levels. It will also offer two slightly modified snack boxes onboard.
United Airlines Restores Champagne, Prosecco, and Poured Wines
After months of serving only economy class-sized bottles of red and white wine onboard, United will restore full-sized bottles of wine and bubbles to its premium cabin service. The move takes place on November 15, 2020.
Poured red and white wine plus Champagne will be offered on international flights in United’s Polaris business class product.
Meanwhile, wine and Prosecco will be offered in United First on the following flights:
- Premium transcontinental
- Los Angeles⇄Newark
- San Francisco⇄Newark
- San Francisco⇄Boston
- Long Haul Hawaii
- Denver
- Houston
- Chicago
- Washington
- Newark
- Intra Pacific
- Guam
- Honolulu
- Saipan
- Manila
- Tokyo Narita
- Select Latin markets
- Bogota
- Quito
- Lima
While Champagne and better wine is returning, you may want to BYOG (bring your own glass). Flight attendants have been instructed to present wine choices to consumer, then pour it into a blue plastic cup in the galley. But it will be served on a silvery tray…
New Snack Boxes
United will also retool two snack boxes on November 15, with contents changing slightly. Premium cabins continue to be offered a choice of sandwich or snack box, depending upon the time of day.
On morning flights, the “Tapas” snack box will include:
- Rustic Bakery Flatbread
- Italian Breadsticks Herb and Garlic
- Bruschetta Spread
- Traditional Hummus
- Savory Pepper Olives
- Sea Salt Almonds
- Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel
On afternoon and evening flights, the “Select” snack box will include:
- Old Wisconsin Beef Salami
- Multi Grain Crackers
- Acacia Crackers
- Mediterranean Apricots
- Smoked Gouda Cup
- White Cheddar Cup
- Hickory Smoked Almonds
- Toblerone Tiny’s
The “Classic” snack box may also be offered on afternoon flights.
Passengers can choose either a sandwich or a snack box on flights departing hubs and snack boxes only (though both options will be available) on downline segments, meaning the return segment from a non-hub.
CONCLUSION
Each step is a small but noteworthy march back toward normality. While shifting from individual water bottles to poured water from larger bottles last month was done to save money, this is not a cutback disguised as an enhancement. With a dark winter ahead, though, I would not expect many more upgrades to service for the time being.
image: United
“Each step is a small but noteworthy march back toward normality”
Almost rid of the turd in the white house and his corrupt administration. Now what to do with people that still voted for him?
That comment, Debit, sounds like it was made in North Korea or Venezuela.
Saying we should do something to those who vote a certain way has no place in America
This is classic trumpian. Float a trial balloon and leave to people’s imagination what he really meant to say. Anyway let’s not turn it anymore political.
Debit, why on earth do you have to make this about politics? This is an avgeek blog. That s*** doesn’t belong here.
I am glad to see services slowly returning to service, I only wish it was across the board and not just premium routes. As a lot of high yield travelers don’t always fly the premium transcon routes all the time.
Agreed, I think we’re all tired of Debit. Matthew needs to block him. He contributes nothing positive to the blog or any of the others where he constantly posts his hate. Yes, we could just all ignore him but I think at this point its just time to block.
Fine.
My contribution to avgeek community. In order to reduce GHG all transcontinental flights should flush their lavatory over the midwest states. This will reduce weight and hence the emissions.
Honestly, Debit. I missed you. I’m glad you’ve returned.
He was funnier before the anti-Trump trolling.
Get a grip
The snack boxes are still a bit of an insult. A box full of fat, salt and sugar laden prepacked snacks doesn’t really interest most people these days. There’s no excuse for not offering better food. It will never happen but I would love to see US airlines embrace the Japanese bento box concept. Getting a bento on the Shinkansen with special dishes from different cities is fun and the quality is amazing. No reason United couldn’t offer a New York box, a Chicago box and a San Francisco box.
Agreed, that would be amazing.
What would go in an American bento box, though? America just doesn’t have the artisanal food culture that monocultures like Japan and Italy have and most Americans, even in premium cabins, wouldn’t really appreciate the cost and effort that would be required to bring catering up to even Do & Co standards. I was at the SFO United Club this week and the agent at the front desk handed me a card saying it would let the bartender know I was entitled to complimentary premium drinks and a snack. The snack on offer (which I declined) was a sealed plastic package (think Lunchables) of pre-sliced cheese and processed meats. The drink offerings in flight were still single-serving swill. The pre-arrival snack was the same heat-in-bag sandwich you get in the back. Sad!
good to hear that you can actually eat and drink in the SFO club now, when we were there no eating, no drinking, you get a snack bag on the way out only.
Is it actually Champagne (sparkling wine from that region in France), or is it actually just plain sparkling wine (from everywhere else) and it’s just being incorrectly called Champagne?
United used to serve Nicolas Feuillatte.
Debit spews the blue of a coach toilet directly into his and zombie Joe’s mouth. After a new premium snack box
Does anyone know if hot meals are served in international business class? I booked an economy award ticket between NYC and Tahiti for travel over Christmas and New Years. I think it was something like appox. 140K miles with 148,000 miles, and paid about $400 for economy plus seats. Deciding with all the talk of miles becoming worthless and devaluations going on if I should just pay 350,000 for business round trip. United flights to Tahiti seem to always be at the highest redemption level for Tahiti, and with Air France re-routing through Vancouver it is less of an option than it was flying through Los Angeles.
Hot meals are being served in both business and economy, all on one tray in both classes. There is no bread basket or dessert cart in J and as of now the wine in J is what would normally be served in Y. If you are able to get three seats to yourself in Y, I don’t think it’s worth paying double the miles for J or even the extra cash for E+. Judging from the seat maps for UA 114/115, it seems like you would have a good chance of getting those three seats in November. Of course, loads will probably be higher over the holidays, so maybe it would be worth paying up for the extra space. The service in J is definitely not worth it as the catering is not much better than in Y and the Polaris lounges are closed.
Thank Cargocult. That makes sense.
So the tapas box is only on morning flights now??
That’s a downgrade.
Separately was offered sandwich choices on an eastbound non premium transcon today (so non hub origination) – wasn’t about two weeks ago on the same route
Sorry, I love in-flight meals and drinks, but I have to insist that this is a terrible idea.
As we’ve seen in numerous studies and simulations, the risk of infection on a flight is pretty minimal when everyone is wearing well-fitted masks, because most of the larger droplets do not travel far enough to reach the next passenger and aerosols get filtered out by the plane’s ventilation system. When the compliance rate starts to drop even a little bit from 100%, we see infection risk go up immediately. In the particular environment of an airplane, this is far more important than social distancing (in regular daily life, social distancing is probably more important than mask-wearing). This understanding is consistent with both the MIT report and the United/Dept of Defense report.
More extensive in-flight service is functionally equivalent with relaxing mask rules, because people will almost certainly spend more than the recommended 10~15 minutes eating these snack boxes.
Think about the in-flight infection cases we’ve seen published. At the beginning of the pandemic, we had a number of superspreader cases on planes. As soon as every airline instituted strict mask-wearing rules, the cases dropped to a handful of isolated cases… except for that one outbreak in Ireland from a Qatar flight, which was very sparsely populated. I don’t think it is a coincidence that this happened on an airline that had almost no reduction to in-flight service during the pandemic.
Right now, the safest way to travel is for everyone to wear masks (fitted properly) throughout the entire flight, for beverage service to be reduced to the absolute minimum, and for long flights that require meal service, stagger them so that people seated close to one another are not maskless at the same time. If we can enforce these rules consistently, we could probably fill all the middle seats and still operate relatively safely (and this is coming from someone who’s been a consistent advocate for blocking middle seats). Delta really has the right idea here with their draconian cuts to in-flight service.
Talking produces droplets. Chewing and drinking, probably not as much. Planes are unlikely places for spread because they are not like restaurants or bars where people are talking and yelling in close proximity to each other while eating. How much do you talk on a flight?
The index case on the LHR-HAN boarded that flight already knowing she was sick and took no precautions to prevent spread. It isn’t much different from how colds and flus were spreading before COVID-19. As for the DOH-DUB flight, it is not clear that infection occurred on the plane. The fact that the cases were spread throughout the plane would imply infection on the ground, perhaps in a transit lounge or bus. DOH uses remote stands, doesn’t it? Also, the very fact that you could only point out the LHR-HAN and DOH-DUB flights as superspreading events out of the millions of passengers who have flown since the beginning of the pandemic shows how safe flying is.
Properly fitted masks? Mask compliance is poor as it is. I would not rely on “proper fit” or the proper behavior of others at all. Avoid people who cough or yell in public or don’t appear to take proper precautions (face shields/neck gaiters/valved masks are signs of ignorance and recalcitrance), take vitamin D supplements and don’t be fat. You’ll be fine.
I don’t understand how people keep getting sick. I don’t stand next to strangers in unventilated spaces and I wash my hands and phone after being out in public. I’ve spent time in numerous COVID-19 “hotspots” and have tested negative for antibodies. Of course, many people seem fine with packing their suitcases on top of their beds and wear shoes in their homes, so hygiene clearly isn’t a concern for them (nor is killing themselves through overeating).
According to the CDC, in the US there have only been 479 COVID-19 deaths under the age of 25 and 6,489 under the age of 45. That is under 3% of the total COVID-19 deaths and most of those involved comorbidities. COVID-19 deaths are not even 10% of total deaths and most of those dying weren’t long for this world in the first place. Millions of people die every year. This is nowhere near an existential threat. The fearful and trembling are welcome to stay at home. I recommend the young and healthy live their lives as close to normally as possible.