Meal Service Secrets of American Airlines Flight Attendants

American’s “Onboard Menu Guide” for domestic first class service was posted online yesterday and there were some interesting tidbits that seemed worth sharing.

As I’ve written before, American breaks the country up into 4 domestic regions and assigns meals to each region for a month. So the meals from Dallas to Miami are different than Dallas to Los Angeles. Each month the meals cycle so that for instance Miami might get one month what Los Angeles had the previous month. The full menu only gets replaced once a year.

So this document shows the particular meals for lunch ‘cycle 4’ as is from July.

Will you get a bread plate on your tray? Only if your flight is under 1299 miles. Longer flights get an appetizer, but no bread plate.

How many of each entree are they boarding? On this flight it was 10 entree salads and 6 vegetarian dishes.

Did you know your flight attendant was supposed to…

  • Welcome you onboard
  • Serve pre-departure beverages (ideally, but getting the flight out on time trumps)
  • Take meal preferences front to back on Eastbound and Southbound flights, and back to front on Westbound and Northbound flights
  • Offer a personal thank you with mints at the end of the flight

I’m not sure how often all of these things happen, but I sure like the ‘personal thank you’.

(HT: Traveling Better)

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 »

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Comments

  1. Such a spartan meal service now – just doesn’t compare to a year ago even with the latest changes.

    A real shame.

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