Jill Surdek, American’s Vice President – Flight Service, updated crew on several projects underway and on several tweaks to the airline’s onboard service.
Flight Attendants Being Trained on Trash
American is working on “[a]isle ready beverage carts (standard domestic packing, new coffee thermal servers, beverage accompaniment)” and the coach pre-order buy on board meal program they started trialing earlier this year.
They’ll be doing a menu refresh for China, Transcon and Europe. And they’ll be workshopping how to pack galleys on Boeing 777-200s since they reduced staffing on those planes and other aircraft as well. And they plan to “assist in educating fellow flight attendants with the understanding of the trash management program and assist with base blitzes regarding trash management.”
The Bread Shortage is Over and Smaller Napkins are Coming
Bread is returning to first class. American reduced the amount of bread in domestic first class and international business earlier this year. However “feedback says we took the levels a little too low.” They bumped the amount of bread back up on international this month, and they expect to load enough bread for domestic first again starting next month.
American is going to be introducing “smaller, but thicker” napkins. The new napkins are 9”x 9”. They’re using up their existing supply of old napkins, but the new ones are rolling out to some flights now.
These may seem like minor changes, but being able to offer a second piece of bread — ideally flight attendants actually doing a second pass and offering bread, but at a minimum having more for someone that asks for it — creates a lasting impression, or at least not having it when asked creates a negative impression.
Details like how the bread is served, is it hot so butter melts when applied or are the rolls cold, matter and don’t cost extra. Small things make a big difference, especially when you add up small things across a flight and an airline.
Standardizing the Amount of Wine Onboard
American is working to standardize their product. They want to operate fewer subfleets of aircraft. Hence they’re taking business class seats out of 13 Boeing 777-200 aircraft so that all Boeing 777-200s are the same. The standardization extends to catering, and the next thing their standardizing is the amount of wine onboard.
Next step is wine. Starting later this month, if you’re going anywhere in Europe, South America, Asia or Oceania, same fleet types flying to the same region will have the same amount of wine, no matter the market. For instance, in South America, if you’re on the Boeing 76R, Boeing 787 or Boeing 787-9, wine provisioning increases from 16 to 19 bottles in Business Class.
Wow! You really know things have gotten bad when “Bringing Back Bread” is news!
Talk about literally being offered breadcrumbs to keep us happy!
Oh, well, such is life in our cartelized/oligopolized skies these days with our ever Racing to the Bottom airlines…
So, is American also going to play a voiceover* recording loop of Oprah shouting “I LOVE B-R-E-A-D” over and over, too, as part of its marketing campaign to let flyers know they’re bringing bread back?
*bc everyone knows Dougie is waaaaaayyyy too cheap to actually hire Oprah to star as their spokesperson 😉
Getting a US airline to serve meals properly is like try to put toothpaste back in the tube. It will never happen because they just don’t care.
Whatever American does it shouldn’t mess with the biscuits. They are the best. I love it when they are served warm and flaky. It is impossible, though, to serve bread hot enough to melt the butter packets on American that often are as hard as if they’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen.
They don’t care bc they know they don’t HAVE to care…
With too few airlines amid record demand, plus many cities beholden to fortress hubs, and many regions of our country beholden to one predominant airline, most flyers don’t have much of choice anyway – airline managements know this and as long as passengers don’t care about being screwed and continue to patronize sleazy businesses that could care less about them, this will continue.
It’s as much about our greedy and abusive airlines, as it is about us as the excellent writer, Dan Reed, of Forbes magazine, noted last week in an excellent column about how in Japan passengers on its famed bullet trains made clear that early departures that left them behind were as unacceptable as trains that left late.
You’ll have to read Reed’s excellent opinion piece for yourself to find out why early departures were viewed with equal disontent as late departures – or how important customers expecting, and demanding, good service is in Japan…
I’d include a link here, but in the past, including links usually results in lengthy delays between uploading comments and then seeing them cleared for posting, so I’ll omit the url link, and instead urge readers to use their search engine of choice and look for Dan Reed’s column that was in Forbes this past week (6/4/18) to track that down.
It’s an EXCELLENT read – and one we should all take to heart as a reminder that we can, and do, deserve better if only we undertook the effort to demand better…
** American reduced the amount of break **
Today’s free copy editing. You’re welcome.
Yikes! Guess I need to correct my typo, too! 😉
So, with that said, of course it’s “discontent” and not “disontent” in the 4th paragraph of the 2nd comment posted above marked 7:58am…
Some frequent flyers maybe concerned that American Airlines is upgrading to “smaller, but thicker” napkins as the first-class loo is sometimes out of toilet paper.
Lipstick on a pig.
I know everyone loves to hate on AA and occasionally I do as well as a loyal AA flyer but I applaud any time they bring back anything or show they are actually listening to something other than the ghost of Scott Kirby.
That being said I am scared to death of the 737 MAX, like Doug, I still haven’t had the pleasure…
For me the bread is no big deal since I never eat it anyway – I hadn’t noticed that they had ever taken it off. However, the new smaller napkins are a bit cheesy, but at least they have the button holes. For a while, they removed the button holes and considering the tight space between seats on many of their planes, I always try to make sure the front of my shirt is covered.
three cheers for the button holes. that said, would still not wear any top or shirt that has to be dry cleaned. best bet is still to pack your own meal, unless you’ve a cast iron stomach.
Generally pack a few small napkins in my carry on, since on the off chance that I’m not served a predeparture beverage (ha, ha!), I’ll have an extra one for the snacks. Only one (see-through) napkin per in flight snack/beverage service these days. Also comes in handy for the (not infrequent) situation of having to muck out the seat debris of the previous occupant, which is also where the hand sanitizer comes in handy.
Part of the reason the tray tables are so filthy is the lack of anything with which to tidy one’s hands. Umm, like a napkin. Guess the airlines have weight restricted the paper products, so each flight only gets one per person per flight. Paper weighs so much more than beverages and takes up so much more space in the gallery; it’s the perfect candidate for a cutback! Just lick your fingers clean. After all. the interiors of the cabins are spotless so your hands should be pristine . . .
Oops, the galley. This thread is monitored by the red pencil brigade.
I never used a napkin with a buttonhole until a flight up front and found it super-practical. But 9×9 may be too small for using on the buttonhole. You need the apron effect on the plane.
Why can’t any type of food service provider figure out that rock-hard frozen butter is useless?
Ugh – I think I’ve seen some of these “smaller but thicker” napkins. They are terrible. They don’t have button holes. Why would they mess with such a thing?
I think years ago they got rid of the button holes but quickly brought them back.