Delta’s Starbucks Crowned Best Airline Coffee, Amex Centurion Named Best Lounge: New Survey Gets Both Wrong

Point.me released a survey on the best airlines for food, drinks, and lounges. And I guess the real takeaway is that you shouldn’t take your advice from what surveys say other people think.

When I go to a restaurant I’ve never been before, and I haven’t done any research, I may ask the waiter for a recommendation. But how you ask the question matters. A waiter may simply respond with what is popular, not with what is best.

• The waiter has no idea what your tastes are like! They don’t know you. The safe answer is to tell you what other people like.

• And people do not have good taste. Osho put it far more bluntly.

So I ask the waiter (1) what is best, not what is most popular, or (2) what would the chef want to serve his grandmother if she visited the restaurant?

Alaska And United Have The Best Coffee

Point.me says that Delta has the best coffee. Delta serves Starbucks. People like Starbucks. There are about 17,000 Starbucks in the U.S., and over 40,000 worldwide. That’s a mass taste, it’s mass marketed, but that is not the same as ‘best’ in some more fundamental sense. The better way to frame this award is to say that Delta serves the most popular coffee and I buy that.

United serves Illy. Alaska serves Stumptown. Both are better than Starbucks. When United ousted disgraced CEO Jeff Smisek, whose legendary cost cuts came with the Orwellian name ‘Project Quality’, replacement Oscar Munoz greenlit two changes that carried huge symbolic importance: new coffee and new snacks in coach.

Munoz’s team went with Illy to replace Fresh Brew, known to flyers as Fresh Poo. And they introduced Stroopwafels. The two even pair well together! It represented a huge break from the Smisek era and the beginning of putting the United brand back together. And boy are Stroopwafels so much better when they are freshly made and not packaged.

American Airlines has now partnered with Lavazza. That’s great! But the biggest thing is it is new longer Fresh Brew, which they were still serving about a decade after United threw that overboard.

Coffee remains tough to do at altitude. And the water used matters, too. But I think Alaska and United are tops here and American is using better coffee than Delta (or Southwest and JetBlue).

Does Air France Really Have The Best Wine?

Point.me suggests Air France does the best job with wine in business class. And I give them credit for being quite respectable! I’m not sure I have an opinion about actual best in business class. In first class I’d rate Emirates first, actually, though Air France is excellent and so is Singapore Airlines. In business you mostly want drinkable. I cannot believe anyone would put British Airways in the top five, though, sacré bleu!

Some programs are generally bad. SriLankan’s tender documents show $6 – $10 per 750ml bottle. But decent wine onboard is about more than budget. Reduced pressure and low humidity inflight interfere with taste. As a result,

• Sparkling wine wins. High acidity and bubbles cut through sensory dulling.
• Aromatic whites beat subtle whites. Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewürztraminer can hold up better than delicate styles.
• Big tannic reds can taste harsher. Tannin perception can skew unpleasant when your palate is dulled and your mouth is dry.
• Fruit-forward, medium-tannin reds do well. Rioja, Rhône blends, Malbec, some New World Merlot/Cab blends. I remember American’s contract wine expert Ken Chase, years ago, strongly favoring fruit bombs.
• Slight residual sugar can help and indeed can be more satisfying in the air than on the ground.

Singapore Airlines says their “wine experts” taste more than 1,000 wines per year. They even have a pressurized tasting room to approximate inflight conditions on the ground.

I tend to like Qantas wines, because I favor Australian wineries and styles. I think when you get on a flight to or from Australia there should be Australian wines on board.

Probably the big surprise among top wine programs is how far United Airlines has come that I now think of them as being among the better carriers for wine in business class.

Even American is finally becoming passable (and arguably better than Delta, while both lag United).

American and Southwest Have The Worst Snacks?

Point.me’s surey says that Southwest’s snacks are the worst “with its lineup of Stellar Pretzel Braids, Remy’s Grahams, and OREO cookies.” Honestly I think they beat American’s Biscoff and generic pretzel packages with hub airport codes on them.

And Southwest actually differentiates its extra legroom section with better snacks. The Mexican wedding cookies are kind of good, if I’m honest.

The Best Business Class Meals Are From Singapore And Emirates

This survey should have stopped after declaring that Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Air France do a great job with their inflight meals.

Air France Business Class

Air France Business Class

Singapore, especially, is known for its ‘book the cook’ pre-order selection which is far more than just choosing in advance from what may be onboard anyway. Out of Singapore, the selections are copious are really quite excellent. One of the best meals I ever had on a plane was Singapore’s business class laksa on a short Bali flight.

Singapore Airlines Business Class

Here’s the rankings:

Qatar Airways does a fabulous job in business class, too. But why are we including British Airways in this discussion? Personally I’d gladly take Japan Airlines short haul business class catering over anything British Airways serves.

My point is that there are great performances, and well-deserved reputations. Often those reputations help solidify mass traveler opinions. But when you get past those immediate reputations, you may be relying on the actual tastes of those mass travelers. They know what they like! But that’s not the same thing as saying they know what is best.

Air France, by the way, should really win best snacks.

No, Centurion Lounges Aren’t “Best”

American Express was the first of the big banks with its own network of lounges. In the last cycle of airline consolidation, American Express was losing lounge partners. United and Continental merged, and a new credit card deal gave Chase exclusivity over card-based lounge access. Amex lost cardmember access to Continental’s Presidents Clubs.

Then American and US Airways merged, and Citibank got card issuer exclusivity over lounge access. Both American and US Airways had been lounge partners of Amex. But American Express was building its own lounges, first in Las Vegas and then in Dallas and beyond. They focused initially on major cities where they didn’t still have lounges (i.e. non-Delta hubs). But then their cardmembers were flooding Delta lounges, and they were forced to pivot and do lounges in places like Atlanta, Salt Lake City and New York JFK’s terminal 4.

American Express Centurion Lounge New York LaGuardia

The most important thing about a lounge is that it’s not overrun. American Express simply has too many cardholders. They’re not alone in this, Capital One’s Denver and Dallas lounges especially can have brutal waits to enter.

But once inside, Amex lounges certainly aren’t better. Overall, Chase lounges have nicer design. Capital One lounges have much better food (although Dallas impresses least). What American Express has is more lounges with more passengers lining up at a trough.

American Express Centurion Lounge New York LaGuardia

Here’s the ranking:

Men leaned toward Centurion (40%), while women split more evenly between Centurion (30%) and Chase Sapphire (29%). Affluent travelers — those earning $150,000 or more — named Amex their top pick at 37% versus 26% for Chase Sapphire.

Certainly, Capital One’s two Landings have better food than any Amex, Chase or Delta Sky Club. This survey does not measure airline business class lounges where Delta One beats United Polaris which beats American Flagship, generally. Though I’d easily take the food in a Capital One Landing over a Polaris or Flagship lounge.

Capital One Landing New York LaGuardia

Capital One Landing New York LaGuardia

You do you, I suppose! Am I off base here?