Effective 01/01/14, United Airlines has quietly eliminated free alcoholic beverages on transpacific flights. This comes just days after Delta Air Lines’ recent announcement that it will expand its free beer and wine offerings on all longhaul international routes to cover spirits too.
Over the last four years, United has gone back and forth in offering free alcohol on transpacific and Asia routes, briefly eliminating the perk before the merger only to bring it back months later. Achieving $2bn in cuts from an airline that has already cut so much is a fool’s errand, but alcohol was about the only thing left short of oxygen masks and seatbelts that could be cut.
The sad thing for United is that Delta has taken the opposite course. With healthy vital signs and higher fares, Delta will now expand its free beer and wine to include all alcohol and offer it on most of its longhaul international flights.
United’s joint venture partner ANA must be seething at this news—ANA customers accustomed to free alcohol and decent food will be in for a rude awakening when they fly an ANA-codeshare operated by United that has barely edible food and no free adult beverages.
United’s death by a thousands cuts continues. FAA regs prohibit the concept of BYOB (unless given to the FAs to pour), but it is a sad testament that even the horrid swill behind the curtain is now too expensive for the Friendly Skies.
I trust that this move is temporary in nature–a way to more expeditiously honor CEO Jeff Smisek’s promise to investors that he would achieve $2BN in cuts that will give United more time to understand what it is doing wrong and how it can turn things around.
I don’t mean to nitpick, but do FAA regulations actually prohibit BYOB? I believe they only specify that alcohol must be served by a flight attendant, but I don’t believe there’s anything in there that says that a passenger could not give his or her alcohol to a flight attendant and ask to have it served. Any limitation on that behaviour would fall to United’s own policies and labour agreements. IF UA were to announce some type of formalisation of this (and I don’t think it would EVER happen) it would certainly alleviate some of the problem from the passenger perspective, though even a modest take-up by economy passengers on a full 747 could quickly overwhelm the handful of FAs dedicated to working economy… How would they even keep track of whose booze was whose?
The race to the bottom continues. This news doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, but never fails to disgust me, either.
Boxed wine costs PENNIES for an airlines.
@John-Paul: You are correct–the reg is against serving yourself, not actually BYOB. Thanks for pointing this out!
@Rohan: So sad that UA offers such a vastly inferior product, particularly in coach, to all the competition, every US legacy and every non-US carrier that I have ever flown on…
United—-the next LCC!
Alcohol was the only thing left to drown the senses and help one overlook snappy and overtly unmotivated FA. Oh well… moving on.