This week I took a few American Airlines flights in first class, including on back-to-back days. That’s not unusual, except I pre-ordered meals and had forgotten I’d done so for day one when I pre-ordered day two. I ordered the sliders both times – it’s a good pre-order option but they come out with inconsistent quality so I actually prefer the enchiladas when available.
On day one they were actually fantastic, really tasty, and even the fries were o.k.
On day two they were downright awful. I wasn’t planning to eat much of it, but I took only one bite. First, here’s how they were presented: fries still in the cardboard box?
The flight attendant working first class was so obviously legacy American Airlines. She was delivering pre-order meals first and went to the bulkhead row to deliver a meal. The passenger there hadn’t pre-ordered. And she was just dumbfounded. She said, “but this is for seat 3A!” American Airlines used to number the first row of first class as three (except on the 757) because the cockpit was row one and the flight attendant jumpseats by the galley were two.
She proactively offered that the burgers looked terrible, and said “I cook them about as long as the nuts and they still come out like this.”
Fortunately I’d already eaten. I had been in D.C. so stopped by the Capital One Landing before my flight. The salmon there is really excellent, along with staples like the croquettes and steak.
For my one night I was back at the Westin Arlington. You might think I’m crazy since this is the hotel caught faking guest benefits to Marriott and secretly pocketing bogus destination fees. But I wanted another bite at that apple.
- They’ve started charging a $25 destination fee.
- Benefits are listed at Marriott.com.
- However, the hoel wasn’t sharing anything proactively about the benefits with guests.
- In fact, when I last checked in I was told that there were no benefits except for a $12.50 food and beverage credit. There was no printed sheet listing the details and I was told I needed to charge items to my room and redeem the physical paper coupon against my folio in person later.
This seems like fraud (advertising benefits that they say are fake) and also a violation of Marriott’s franchise agreement (which requires specific benefits with a face value 4x the fee amount).
On my last stay I was told management would contact me, but they didn’t. I complained to Marriott and I was promised that the hotel would contact me. They didn’t. They would close the case on their end. I would keep getting Marriott to re-open it, and they’d keep closing it.
So I figured I’d go check in and record the interaction, because I wasn’t done with this. Except after I wrote about the destination fee issue they… started proactively sharing details of it with pre-printed cards.
It’s still a complete rip off, but they aren’t promising one thing and then denying the benefits exist!
@Barry Graham – I was told again and again that kosher meals were the “best kept secret” for scoring quality food in airline situations. So one evening at the Delta Sky Lounge in Atlanta, I decided to see for myself. What I received was less a meal and more a biological weapon in a cardboard box. It looked like something scraped out of a hospice bedpan, smelled like fermented ass, and tasted like microwaved carpet padding soaked in dog sweat. I tried one bite and genuinely thought I might s**t myself in reverse. I’d describe it further, but doing so might trigger my gag reflex and spray my screen with last night’s tequila. That was the first and last kosher meal I will ever order, unless I develop a sudden fetish for culinary waterboarding.