American Airlines is rolling out a new afternoon tea service in all cabins on flights from London and Paris to the United States. This is a test and it’s not yet clear when it will end, but looks promising.

• Business and first class: finger sandwiches, scones, jam and clotted cream with a Victoria sponge cake and fresh fruit.
  
• Premium economy: scone, finger sandwiches, clotted cream, jam and fresh fruit.
  
• Economy: scone, finger sandwiches, clotted cream and jam.

Credit: American Airlines

Afternoon tea replaces the cold option for second meal service. The hot option will continue to be offered. And a spokesperson tells me that this is “a test and our team will collect customer feedback throughout.”

Here’s a business class tea offering on American’s joint venture partner British Airways.

And here’s a first class tea offering,

I’m actually booked to fly American out of London Heathrow this summer and hopefully this test will still be in place. I would love to try it – more so if they’d borrow some of the actual tea from their partner BA.

Also included in American’s announcement is an addition to food options for sale in coach on domestic flights. A real shortcoming of the airline’s domestic product has been their buy onboard offering.

While airlines like United and Alaska offer significant choices, including hot options, American has very little food for sale in economy and offers it on very few flights. Most of the airlines passengers are domestic coach passengers, and legacy America West Airlines (which took over American) pioneered selling food instead of serving complimentary meals to economy passengers.

American has updated their food for sale offerings with a Tostitos Snack Box:

• Tostitos Bite Sized Rounds
  
• Tostitos Chunky Salsa

It’s only on flights over 1,300 miles, and at a charge of $9 or 900 miles. Incidentally, low cost carrier Allegiant sells Tostitos crispy rounds – with your choice of salsa or nacho cheese dip for just $8.

This just doesn’t cut it, and by the way there’s rarely enough loaded onto flights to be available to passengers who want to buy them – at least the flights I’m on.

This is doubly problematic because a complimentary snack in economy is supposed to be a benefit of Executive Platinum and ConciergeKey status, and a statement credit to spend for onboard snacks is supposed to be a benefit of the Barclays Aviator Silver AAdvantage co-brand credit card. So I hope this isn’t the revamp of the onboard food for sale program that we’ve been expecting.