$1,700 for First Class, Then a Box Lunch: American Airlines Still Serves Sandwiches in Shrink Wrap on Regional Flights [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • It’s long past time for real meals to return to American Airlines regional Eagle flights, even similar to what was offered pre-pandemic would work. About 47% of American’s flights are operated by regional jets.

  • Could Elon Musk buying Ryanair go from a joke to real? (With a local European partner, of course)

    Here’s how he could convince himself there’s a business case and not insane:

  • One of my most unpopular opinions is that United Airlines isn’t nearly as premium as it claims to be (outside of its business class wine program).

  • I reported on decline of food at Capital One’s DFW lounge, so I’m glad to see reports that they’ve restored menu items and dropped cold grab ‘n go-style items from the buffet for which maintenance was cited.

    Dfw lounge food
    byu/CatsMoreCatsCats inVenturex

  • Landline buses, which operate as flights, have permitted transport of firearms just like planes. I did not realize, however that this had been embargoed at some point. However, the embargo has been lifted.

  • American Airlines no longer accepts in-person split tender payments (you can, of course, still use trip credits for partial payment).

  • Check, please.

    View on Threads

    View on Threads

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  2. Re: a sandwich for a $1700.00 flight.
    You do know that the bulk of the fare does not involve the cost of the food?
    Fuel, maintenance, the plane itself, airport costs, ground and in-flight staff, taxes, lots of taxes, insurance and of course the CEO’s pocketful….
    Eat a decent meal before you fly. You might just be a little less miserable.

  3. From searching online, the hole at the rear of the airplane is the exhaust port of the auxiliary power unit (APU).

  4. What person would spend $1.7K on a regional flight? The soggy sandwich part is the least of how this person got screwed. Now if $1.7K included a long haul connection that’s different but the amount allocated to the regional flight would have been quite small.

  5. “American Airlines no longer accepts in-person split tender payments (you can, of course, still use trip credits for partial payment).”

    No doubt this is due to customer demand since most customers want less flexibility.

  6. The Elon-Ryanair stuff is silly; that said, I recently experienced Starlink on QR’s a350, and wow, that service is really good. Like, please, Elon, stay outta politics and social media, and just do more with your companies. Stop getting distracted with nonsense!

    Speaking of C1 lounges, at JFK T4, supposedly SQ now sends J passengers there, so I’ve found a loophole to actually finally experience it, without having to be a paid guest or get C1 to approve me for VX while LOL/24. So, finally gonna check it out in Feb.

  7. So, imagine the following. A FA tells the pax before meal service that AA mgmt told them that, while the $1700 price was appropriate when booked, because the meal service was going to be subpar, AA would have only charged $1650. The FA hads them an appology note from AA with a fifty. So, is the pax happy now? What if it had been $1650 up front? What about $900. At what price is it OK to serve that in F? My guess is there is no number > Y price that would have made them not think this.

Comments are closed.