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Home arrow News arrow Travel in the News arrow No Free Meals On United Airlines
No Free Meals On United Airlines
Tuesday, 14 October 2008

airplane interior As of Oct. 1, United Airlines no longer offers complimentary meal service for coach-class customers, and fliers aren’t happy about it. Food will be available if you’re willing to pay (you’ll find the menu here), although it’s still free in Business class. The change has been greeted with outrage by many travelers, especially those flying between Washington Dulles airport and Europe.

Randy Petersen, publisher of InsideFlyer magazine, told USA Today, "In a single day nearly 35,000 frequent fliers read about this topic and nearly 600 have added comments. That's a lot of buzz for a single topic.” And most of it is negative.

“The snack boxes are fine to purchase if the flight is 3 or 4 hours, but a trans-Atlantic flight is another story,” Tom Fox, a Premier Executive member of United's frequent-flier program, told the paper. “I suspect this is all about cutting the staff on the plane to FAA minimums, and the way to do this is to cut out all the meal service.”

Some customers are more sanguine about the changes. “I think the bottom line in this case is that it's one more thing being removed and people are fed up with it,” said Salt Lake City frequent flier Hunter Wolfe. “I would honestly rather see them scale back in areas like this to preserve their ability to fly more often to more places.”

Most fliers, however, seem to agree with frequent-flier expert Tim Winship, publisher of the frequentflier.com website, who told the paper, “An overseas trip is a long, strenuous slog. And, from a business standpoint, it's highly profitable for the airlines. So recasting meals as an extra-cost item naturally strikes many as nasty and mean-spirited. The prevailing sentiment is that United has simply gone too far in the wrong direction.”

You can find out more at http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2008-08-21-united-reax_N.htm

Last Updated ( Monday, 13 October 2008 )
 
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