You know JetBlue for their blue chips, but now they’ve decided to beef up their offerings. The airline quietly started launching buy-on-board meals this week and the result is underwhelming to say the least.

Let’s make one thing clear. The ample selection and large variety of snacks will stay. That’s not changing at all. But there are some people who want something more substantial, so that’s the point of these meals, which cost $6 a piece and are available on A320 flights of over 3 hours and 45 minutes. You would think that an airline like JetBlue would go with something different and exciting, but you’d be wrong. They’ve gone with shelf-stable crap.

There are five different “meals” and only two (maybe one and a half) look even remotely healthy. Even those aren’t exactly appealing. Here’s my list, in order, of the ones that I’d be tempted to try.

Shape Up
This is what they’ve decided passes for something healthy. It includes pita chips, hummus, raisins, almonds, fruit crisps, and snack mix. Is this healthy? Somewhat, but I’d imagine that some of this stuff is, as a friend calls it, “salty death mix” with a healthy look and feel. I’d rather stick with the free cashews, blue chips, fruit crisps, and cookies that they’ll still hand out.

Cheer Up
They have wine on board, so why not have fruit and cheese as well? Delta actually does a good job with that, but then again, they actually have fresh fruit and tasty cheese. JetBlue is going with dried fruit and what I assume to be shelf-stable Swiss, Smoked Cheddar, and Hot Pepper. Not exactly inspiring at all.

Power Up
After the Cheer Up package, this drops off a cliff pretty quickly. Power Up has chips and salsa, some beef jerky, and some pretzels with dip. If they serve this, they better have that drink service going nonstop, because the salt in these will make you thirstier than a ramp agent in Phoenix in July.

Wake Up
For those who want breakfast, you can pretend by ordering this drek. Yep, a croissant in a bag served with jam and butter alongside a Dole fruit cup, chocolate milk, and . . . Cheez-Its? Who decided Cheez-Its were breakfast food? This one is enough to make you ill.

Beef Up
The clear winner (loser?) in the race for the worst meal is this one. Start with what we used to call “funny salami” as a kid (that stuff that would outlast Twinkies in a nuclear blast), add in some crackers and bagel chips, and finish it off with two types of cheese “spread” and some fruit crisps to give it the appearance of being healthy and you’ve got nastiness. I remember when Southwest used to give out something like this on their long hauls, but they’ve stopped, I believe. Probably because it’s awful.

So, really JetBlue? Is the best you can do? I know that people like crap, but you guys don’t usually seem to stoop to this level. I’ll be curious to see if enough people pay for this to make it worthwhile. I certainly won’t.

Would you willfully submit yourself to taste-test a bunch of airline food? Probably not, but I did this past week thanks to the people at Amazing Food Creations. And you know what? It was good. Beyond that, learning more about the insanity involved in getting food on an airplane was completely fascinating.

A friend of mine works at Amazing Food Creations (AFC) outside Chicago, so when I mentioned I’d be in town, we decided to set up a visit. AFC provides food to a couple of the largest airlines in the world. They put together everything from coach to first class, and they do domestic and international. They don’t do buy-on-board food just yet, but they’d like to get in the game.

So how come you’ve never heard of AFC even though you’ve likely had their food? It’s because there are an unbelievable number of middlemen involved in the process, so you’re pretty far removed from these guys.

I had the chance to sit with co-founder Dari Carré (pictured) to learn exactly how the process works. It’s nuts.

Complicated enough for you? Let me explain those numbers and hope I took accurate notes. I’ll use AFC as an example.

1. First, the airlines figure out what they need and put it out in a spec sheet that also shows the pricepoint per meal. That info is distributed.

   Then AFC and other food manufacturers prepare a presentation for them with prototype meals that are made in their test kitchens (at right). Sometimes, manufacturers deal with brokers to get their food onboard while other times, they just deal directly.

   Every airline has different requirements. AFC wouldn’t use any current names, but they said that Northwest wanted traditional, American meals with a bland flavor palette to appeal to its customers. Other airlines want something a little spicier and more exotic.

   Let’s say the airline likes what AFC has to offer. They’ll probably go back and forth for awhile until they get exactly what they want. Finally, a contract will be awarded. It’s usually 12 to 24 months in length.

2. Once AFC wins the bid, they have to figure out how to turn the prototype meal into a full production meal. That can require small or large tweaks to make sure the product is consistently good when it’s mass-produced.
3. AFC does all their manufacturing in their suburban Chicago facility. From there, a distributor comes to pick up the grub and distribute it. AFC provides food to airlines throughout the US and Canada, so multiple distributors will end up being used.
4. The distributor will take the food to the caterer in each airport location. These caterers are the ones you may know – GateGourmet, LSG Sky Chefs, etc. AFC only makes entrees, so these guys take them and add the salad, dinner roll, trays, condiments, etc. They then put it on the plane.
5. Lastly, finally, the flight attendant brings the meal to you and you shove it in your mouth.

 
Insane, right? I couldn’t believe it. It seems like there’s a lot of opportunity for the caterers to start taking over more of these roles so that you only need the airline, the caterer, and the food manufacturer.

It can get even more difficult than this. Airlines will sometimes contract with celebrity chefs to do meals. You might remember, for example, when Charlie Trotter partnered with United for meals. Well, when this happens, the company and the chef spend a great deal of time putting together meals that are true to the chef but also will hold up well on the plane. For example, you want to cut vegetables a certain way so that they prepare correctly onboard.

After all this, we headed to the test kitchen for a little bit of taste-testing. The chef and co-founder, Dari’s husband Eric Carré, creates food with several other chefs. These guys absolutely love doing this. It’s really funny to see someone put so much into airplane food, but it’s also pretty refreshing to know that there are people who are trying.

They brought out a spread of food for me to try ranging from the surprisingly delicious vegan 7-grain pilaf with fruit compote and sweet bulger wheat (left) to the just awesome mandarin orange chicken (right) which is served in First Class.

It was really interesting to see how the vegetables reacted to cooking. The meals are supposed to be heated in a convection oven on a plane, but they used a microwave because of our time constraints. The broccoli was soggy, and Chef Eric (as everyone called him) explained that the way they prepared it meant it was overcooked in a microwave but it would be in good shape on the airplane.

While AFC is doing traditional meals for now, they’re also looking at the buy-on-board world. They have a frozen meal that actually steam cooks in a bag (with Dari at top and at right). I tried them and they were really good, especially the Cuban veggies. Maybe one day you’ll be able to get it onboard.

Thanks to everyone at Amazing Food Creations for spending the afternoon with me. If you’d like to try their steam-cooked meals, head to Whole Foods where they sell them under the French Meadow name.

Larry Kellner has only been gone as head of Continental for a couple months and already new CEO Jeff Smisek is making plenty of changes. The most visible one to coach passengers is likely to be the elimination of free meals, something that was long the pride and joy of Continental. They’ve finally caved, and I imagine there will be mixed emotions on this one.

On the one hand, people always liked that Continental stood their ground and kept at least SOMETHING in the back of the bus that reminded people of the old days. Was the free meal anything special? No way. It was edible at best, though I did have a soft spot for that cheeseburger in a bag. (Do they still have that?) But even if you didn’t like it, it was comfort food, and that was nice. There was also something psychologically-appealing about them seeming to care enough for you to keep food around, even if it was crappy. It just seemed like the last vestige of civility. Former CEO Gordon Bethune summed it up well with his thoughts after 9/11.

Our reaction was to be ourselves more than we ever were. Didn’t take away the movies, didn’t take away the blankets and pillows, didn’t take off the magazines. We talked about this a lot, and I said, ‘Look, guys, if ever we were consistent and reliable, we have to be now. You have to be steady when the fucking sky is the shakiest. We’ve got to be clean, safe, and reliable, and let everybody know it. That’s all we got. That’s our edge in the business.’

Now Continental is chipping away at that as well.

But don’t worry, Continental is happy to spin this announcement so you think it’s some amazing revolution on their part. It wasn’t quite Cranky Jackass-worthy, but still kind of dumb. The release reads “Continental Airlines to Offer Food for Purchase on Select Flights” with a subhead of “Menu will include wide variety of high quality, healthy food choices.” So the spin is basically, yeah we might be getting rid of free food, but we’re replacing it with delicious, healthy, wholesome food that will make you think you’re at a five star restaurant . . . or something like that.

The way it works is this. You will now get a free meal only on flights over 6 hours in length. That’s an interesting cutoff. The 1p flight from Newark to LAX is blocked at 5h56m on Saturday and 6h6m the rest of the week. So will the folks on Saturday not get fed? And no eastbound flight from LA gets even close to 6 hours, so will that mean you only get fed westbound? Either way, only the longest domestic routes will get grub included in the price of the ticket.

I’m sure the food will be better, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have offered both options. That’s what Hawaiian does. They offer a basic meal for free and then you can buy some really high quality stuff if you’d like to trade up. But Continental hasn’t gone that route. I figured they’d be the last to hold out, thanks to their ownership of Chelsea Food Services, the kitchen that puts these meals together. But I guess even that couldn’t sway them to keep feeding people for free.

It’s not the elimination of free meals that really bugs me but rather that Continental is now falling into the same place as everyone else. The free meal was this signal of respect, or something like that. It showed they cared just a little bit more than the rest. Not anymore.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/projector/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Over the weekend, US Airways said it would stop charging for soda, water, coffee, and tea on March 1. You’ve probably read about this elsewhere by now, but it’s interesting to think about why they’re finally relenting on something that they held out on for months. It appears that this is a big shift in the US Airways strategy. The airline is now admitting that perception is important, and it is taking some seemingly small but actually big steps to fix their image problem.

In a world where airlines gladly charge for anything they can, US Airways surprisingly went it alone on this drink charge. No other major airline followed the lead to charge for soda and water. The airline resisted changing back despite all the criticism . . . until now. In the words of CEO Doug Parker:

We know customers don’t buy an airline ticket based on whether or not they will get a free soda onboard, but with US Airways being the only large network carrier to charge for drinks, we are at a disadvantage. More importantly, this difference in our service has become a focal point that detracts from all of the outstanding improvements in on-time performance and baggage handling that all of us have worked so hard to achieve over the past year.

This really is a big change, despite what they’re saying. It was just last September that the airline explained how happy it was with the change. President Scott Kirby went so far as to say that the flight attendants would “riot” if they went back to the old way. Talk about a change of direction, huh?

It appears that the airlines reputation and high level of consumer complaints have caused the about-face. US Airways has made excellent strides with its on-time performance lately, and overall reliability has been quite good, yet the airline still ranks toward the bottom of the list when it comes to complaints. In December, for example, US Airways had the second best on-time performance behind perennial leader Hawaiian Airlines. The airline canceled only 2.1% of flights in the very difficult month (poor weather) and reported fewer mishandled bags than the industry average. But when it comes to complaints, the airline finished next to last, just ahead of cellar-dweller United. So what’s going on?

At last year’s media day, the management claimed that they needed to focus on reliability, appearance, and convenience. Apparently, management has now realized that it’s not enough. They actually need to do more than that to keep people happy. They must have been receiving a fair number of complaints about charging for water and soda, so they relented. They’ll lose some money on this, but people will be happier. And that has now strangely become important to them. What a pleasant surprise.

They are also looking to address other sore spots. Instead of just being happy with a strong on time performance, they’ve actually decided they need to tell people about it. This is an airline that has really avoided brand advertising for years. But now they are actually finding some value in it, and they’re promoting their on time performance in several different types of media.

It’s a very interesting move for an airline that had been moving to a true a la carte model and had not put stock in brand advertising for many years. Personally, I would have thought that simply not charging for water would have been plenty. As long as people can get something to drink, they’ll be fine. But US Airways has decided to remove the charges from soda, coffee, and tea as well in order to boost the airline’s image. It will be interesting to see if the consumer complaint number starts to drop after this move.

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