United Airlines is adding a pre-arrival snack to select transcontinental and other competitive domestic routes as it seeks to better compete against its peers in terms of onboard premium cabin catering.
New Warm Pre-Arrival Snack On United Airlines Competitive Longer Flights
Last autumn, United began offering a substantial pre-arrival meal on its premium transcontinental routes between Newark (EWR) and Los Angeles (LAX) / San Francisco (SFO). That included a three-course meal with a salad, main course like pasta or crab cakes, and a side of fruit. Considering both American Airlines and Delta Air Lines only offer a cookie to arriving business class passengers on these routes and JetBlue only offers a packet of chocolate-covered walnuts, this actually pushed United ahead of its peers (at least in terms of quantity).
This month, United is expanding its pre-arrival service in a way I cannot ever historically recall in my 20 years of regularly flying on the carrier, with a hot snack prior to landing on competitive transcontinental routes. While there won’t be a three-course meal like on premium transcon flights, a warmed apricot cinnamon roll will be served on flights that arrive before 9:59 am and pizza Margherita will be offered for the arrival snack on later arriving flights.
Interestingly, it isn’t clear why some routes receive this and others do not, though I’d pin on competitive pressures on a route. For example, flying between San Francisco and Washington (IAD) or Boston (BOS) you will be served the pre-arrival meal, but flying between San Francisco and Pittsburgh (PIT) or Orlando (MCO) you will not.
If you’re flying between Atlanta (ATL) and San Francisco, you will be served a pre-arrival snack, but between Tampa (TPA) and San Francisco, there is no pre-arrival snack.
You can check the menu of your specific flight on united.com or the United app (under flight status).
CONCLUSION
United Airlines is now offering a warm snack prior to arrival on key coast-to-coast flights.
Ultimately, I’d like to think I would pass on these carb-bombs anyway…but I think it’s great that United continues to invest in its onboard cuisine and also interesting that only some transcon routes benefit from this higher level of service.
images: United Airlines
Are these also on the west coast to Hawaii routes?
It would be nice to have standard transcon service. Now, just bring back the transcon sundaes!
Yes to Hawaii.
(and apparently free food in economy now on those flights too)
And I agree, bring back the sundaes!
free food in Y west coast to Hawaii?
Are they treating Hawaii flights as international or something? If so, how about Polaris for the long haul? DL is even doing D1 from the west coast to Hawaii now
I am guessing in typical Kirby Kwality, it will be served in some plastic or paper packaging and of poor quality.
Yep . “Kirby Kwality” would also somehow involve stiffing the FAs .
Good news but definitely weak sauce since it’s on some routes but not others. That lack of consistency is pretty illustrative of Kirby’s dedication to being a premium airline: variable.
Weak sauce? Looks like no sauce on that “pizza”
Pizza looks like the government subsidized kids meal.
I applaud the effort, but I would really rather they ditch the second meal/snack on transcon and invest more in the primary meal. This goes for premium transcon EWR-LAX/SFO too, as the primary meals on those routes are still lagging what AA and DL are serving on JFK-LAX/SFO.
That may be the worst looking “pizza” ever made. Sabarro may be better.
Talk about F’n your customers and asking them to Thank You.
Only on United’s own planet that is called a Margherita pizza. That looks like a huge load of unnecessary carbs that scream processed to me. That reminds me of the “calzone” that Delta serves before landing on international flights. Disgusting. I would prefer to be hungry and never eat that stuff.
Remember these are the food stylist photos!
Well, if that is the case the person doing that should be fired. You can call that whatever you want but a Margherita pizza. I actually visited the pizza place in Naples, Italy that invented the Margherita pizza hundreds of years ago. It is well known to have tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella cheese and basil leaves. Absolutely none of those ingredients are shown on those pictures.
@Santastico … Well , if you were there “hundreds of years ago” , you likely tasted the original first one .
Quick question. I do a fresh tomato, fresh basil and shaved Parmesan occasionally. No mozzarella. Do you know what this called? Thank you.
I think the only route where people would actually eat that is ATL.
I’ll take those any day over some locally sourced, organic, kale-quinoa hipster chow garbage, or worse, UA’s horrific dalliance with Indian food.
I love kale-quinoa hipster chow 😉
🙂 As I’ve said before, at the DL Sky Club at FLL, people ain’t eating that dreck; they’re eating the mac and cheese.
This is great / nice I like it but I don’t understand the logic behind offering it only on competitive routes- very loyal fliers which are mostly regular business travelers will fly the airline regardless and the more often you fly the less you care about meals on board (IMO), this seems like something that would appeal to infrequent fliers / those without status or loyalty which would probably be confused that this is offered on some routes and not others.
Again I’m happy they are doing this and IMO it validates my move from AA to UA bc they seem to be more committed to passenger service than some of the others but I don’t understand the logic.
I’m a little confused by your article. Are you saying there are now 3 levels of transcontinental service on United now? Premium which gets a 3 course meal for its arrival service, competitive which gets an apricot cinnamon roll or pizza, and non competitive no pre arrival?
yes
I appreciate the effort.