The Catering Conundrum: No Food for You!
One more “Penny Wise, Pound Foolish” management technique at the “new” United is round-trip catering. On many flights, food for both outbound and return trips is boarded before the first departure, saving money on catering for the return trip.
As pilots, we’ve seen this repeatedly fail, as catering errors where food is loaded for only one direction (not uncommonly, Hawaii flights) can’t be rectified at the intermediate destination, since we no longer cater from those stations. More than once, we and the Customer Service/Stations Operations staff have wound up “catering for passengers” from vending machines in the concourse.
We’re all in favor of saving money when service isn’t affected, but these repeated errors call for either better quality control, or a return to catering at all stations.
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This is a common problem here in Portland. We used to issue meal vouchers and go get the crew food from the store on the concourse. Now management has taken away the meal voucher authority from us. "Go without the meals. We're not charging our station to replace them" is the answer I get when calling for crew meals. We've left without a catered F classs because PDX does not want to pay the $100 van charge to Sky Chefs since the meals were to be catered from Denver.
I think the problem goes further then this. Catering, on long haul flights is just not good enough, period. I fly every few weeks from Australia to the USA (which gets some of UA's best catering btw) and to be frank, it's just not competitive. On a 1 hr hop, yes it doesn't matter... but this cost cutting must stop on the long haul. Particularly up front. Why would people pay $10 000 for a return ticket on UA to basically be given substandard food... food that doesn't even match what's on offer at Cafe Ikea! Yes its great that they're introducing new business class seats...(though i've never seen on on this route yet, they're taking their time installing them) But the competition, Qantas and Air New Zealand wipe the floor with United's face on these routes. It's too bad, because I'd really like to give my business to UA. It used to be great in the 1990s. And connection wise it's much easier then Qantas. BUT... its just too much money to pay for that substandard service! If they just spend $100 per business class pax on catering (or 1% of the ticket price) they could give an outstanding result. Penny wise and Pound Foolish. Passengers aren't wallets walking around with people attached... they expect something back for that money!
Many times these meals are left on the airplane un refrigerated and become spoiled. We have monthly reports of pilots receiving food poisoning from improperly handled meals. There are times when meals are boarded 3 to 4 flight segments before they are to be unloaded at an outstation for the following day's flight! Too many chances for error in the food custody chain.
I was unlucky enough to be flying an airplane from MCO-DEN on Sunday. The plane came in from ORD and should have been catered in Chicago for our flight (and theirs). When it arrived in MCO, there were no Buy on Board boxes available for our customers, there was no water and minimal ice available. There weren't even any pretzels, for goodness sake! So for a 3 1/2 hour flight, there was basically nothing. The poor station people were able to scrape together water bottles, sodas and enough pretzel bags for everyone but anything else would have meant a 1 hour (or greater) delay. Imagine our embarrassment in having to tell this to our customers. Our customers continued to be patient and understanding. My thanks to them and to the outstanding station service from MCO. Now, let's fix the problem...Glenn Tilton and his team must go!
I was a loyal United customer until I experienced the results of this policy. I was unable to purchase food on a transcontinental flight due to inadequate supplies. Both the meals and the snack boxes were sold out by the 4th row of coach.
Needless to say, I have not flown UA since.
If they want to save fuel, why are they loading the plane with extra weight?