A United Airlines first class passenger posted the photo above of his sumptuous repast on a United flight, saying,
“Hey United, is this a joke? I just flew 5+ hours in First Class and this bowl of sadness is what you serve me for dinner. Between the 3D-printed mystery meat, the cafeteria cheese cubes, and the whole tomato I need a chainsaw to cut, this is genuinely unbelievable.”
No, it’s not unbelievable. I’m old enough that I remember when coach class seating included something approaching real meals on long flights, but those days are long gone. United always was near the bottom of the barrel as far as customer service went, but now that the airlines realize that nothing else matters to flyers as much as the ticket price and the schedule, none of them even try to make flights pleasant any more, because there is nothing in it for them.
Sure, it would be ethical for an airline to decide that it was going to make flying less of a miserable ordeal, but these companies literally don’t care about your comfort. And what’s your alternative? A train? A blimp? Flap your arms real hard?
They don’t have to care, so they don’t. And thus passengers end up with “bowls of sadness.”
Ethics Alarms 
Quite the mash-up of incentives colliding here.
It’s also a fun game to play the “what would ticket prices back when airlines served almost-meals be in today dollars”? I wouldn’t be surprised if the average coach ticket with a meal in like 1970 or 1980 adjusted for inflation would make you nearly pass out seeing the price today.
At some point, a company has to provide real services, or investors will vanish. I’ll agree that there is a strong temptation to cook books to appease investors, but eventually that behavior catches up with a company. I’ll also agree that companies will cut back on customer service if it seems that people will keep buying the product even absent the customer service, but if customers will keep buying the product absent good customer service, then it is prudent for a company to cut back on something the customer doesn’t actually find important. (And if YouTube content creators are going to produce, free of charge, everything you need to know to fix a problem, why not simply outsource customer service to YouTube?)
I’d be willing to bet that airlines have found that the in-flight meals are actually very low priority for customers in general. If, as Jack indicates, what customers really care about are ticket prices and schedules, it is incumbent upon the airlines to focus their main efforts there. I wonder how much of in-flight meals and snacks have been wasted, on average?
I haven’t flown in several years, but my husband and I have been taking short vacations on Amtrak each fall the past few years. There is an entire thread on the Amtrak Unlimited discussion forums about Amtrak dining car and cafe service, much of which consists of complaints about “bowls of sadness”, especially on routes using the Flexible Dining menu. The latest news is that baked potatoes are returning to the Traditional Dining menu at lunch and supper, and that Flexible Dining passengers will be able to choose Cafe car sandwiches for lunch, in addition to the “microwave entree” options which used to be the only choices for both lunch and supper. (Hopefully those Cafe Car sandwiches will be plated & nuked outside their plastic wrappers, as the result when nuked in plastic wrappers is about what you’d expect for dollar-store microwave sandwiches.)
It is a 3 hour drive from Fort Worth to Austin.
Amtrak advertises the route as 4 hours and 40 minutes from Fort Worth to Austin – however round that up to about 5 hours and 20 minutes to account for getting to the station in Fort Worth and then leaving the station in Austin.
We thought it’d be grand fun to take the kids on a train ride so we picked this modest option. The kids had a blast because trains are almost always fun for kids.
We sat at the Fort Worth station for a full hour in a train that was NOT even turned on because it had “maintenance issues” and the train wouldn’t idle. But heaven forbid you get off the train and lose your seat to someone else and have to sit in a less preferred location. This baking hot experience was the only part the kids didn’t like.
We departed Fort Worth and ended up stopping in south Fort Worth. We literally came to a stop near a main road that would have taken us right down to our neighborhood and comfortable house. I could see a local eatery we often enjoyed.
We eventually got moving again. Other than schedule station stops the train came to a stop about 4 other times for various reasons.
The “schedule” HAAHHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAAH had the Fort Worth to Austin trip from like 2:30 pm to 7:10ish. We arrived in Austin about 9 o’clock and got into our hotel around 9:45. While the kids enjoyed themselves we vowed never again.
Boy what a dummy I was when I thought we’d do it again this past year to meet my wife who was at a conference in Austin for a weekend. Surely that was a fluke. Surely Amtrak isn’t actually that bad. It had to be a one off.
Nah, the only thing Amtrak did better this time was get us in 1 hour late instead of 2. Still got to sit on an unairconditioned train idle in the Fort Worth station for “maintenance”.
And the food? Why a microwaved pre-made cheese burger is tip-top. I love reaching an icy central reward after eating through the fires of Mount Doom to get there. Yum!
How much did the 7 hour trip to Austin cost us? Surely it cost less than a 3 hour car ride AND you didn’t have to stress about driving! Nah, the tickets all told would have paid for about 2 full drives back and forth to Austin on our own and allowed us to idle the car all night just for funsies.
I’ve told myself “never again” for a second time. But, I’m always available to be duped again.
My husband and I did enjoy our overnight visit to Fort Worth itself, though (from Illinois via the Texas Eagle). We were quite exhausted by the time we walked to the Hampton Inn (too close to the station for “Molly the Trolley”, and we didn’t yet know about the platform-to-station shuttle for elderly & handicapped passengers when we arrived), but the Hampton Inn staff was super about keeping us hydrated and finding us a room next to the elevator, and we most certainly made use of the station-to-platform shuttle to board the northbound Texas Eagle the next day.
I have to admit, however, that a big reason why we chose to only ride the Texas Eagle as far as Fort Worth was concern over arriving in an unfamiliar town further into Texas after dark, which would have been even worse had the Texas Eagle not been running relatively on time when we rode it. My husband and I assume that Amtrak on-time performance will not be great when we make travel plans, so we have learned to pick destinations where the scheduled arrival time will be no later than mid-afternoon, and where the nearest hotel either has free transportation from the station, or is so close that it is within a reasonable walking distance — even for out-of-shape “seasoned citizens” like us!
Hope yall enjoyed downtown Fort Worth. Best little family friendly downtown ever. Fort Worth also the biggest small town you’ll ever visit.
We did! I’d like to return to Fort Worth eventually and stay at least 2 nights instead of 1; that would at least give us a chance to ride “Molly the Trolley” and see more of the downtown area.
If you can branch across the river to the west in the camp Bowie area. Fun art museums and cultural scenes.
Of course the old stockyards to the north of downtown is fun. A little more boisterous.
Have a dinner at Joe T Garcia’s (cash only).
My very first flight – a trip to Seattle in 1996 (?) – featured an actual breakfast on one of the legs…and I recall that it was quite good. I think that was the only time I was ever served anything other than a snack.
I don’t really miss the meals, and I wouldn’t eat them anyways because I get too nervous. When the pilot announces the length of the flight, I quick calculate the number of seconds, then I sit for the remainder of the flight and count them off – one…two…three – until we’re done. That’s not hyperbole, that’s what I do. Flying would be perfect if gravity wasn’t involved.
Anyways, I think our host’s analysis of the “bowls of sadness” is largely accurate. Airline companies are really only concerned about landing with the same number of (alive) people that they left the ground with. Any perk you receive beyond that is just a happy coincidence.
Deregulated air travel is a boon for the middle class. In January of 1973 I flew from Miami to London on a BOAC 707. (Remember when every movie started with a Boeing 707 coming in for landing with a key character on board?) There were more stewardesses and stewards on the flight than there were passengers. I’m sure BOAC was required to fly the route regardless of demand. Now, it seems as if planes don’t leave the gate and fly the route unless they are completely full. I used to take Greyhound buses as a kid from Miami to Lake Worth Florida, unaccompanied, to stay with relatives for a week or two during the summer. My aunt and I traveled from Miami to San Francisco and back when I was twelve largely on buses. I also took a bus from the Port Authority to Utica, New York, through a snowstorm that had cancelled my Mohawk flight. Air travel today is the equivalent of what bus travel was in prior times. It’s allowed Everyman to jet across the country and around the world. It’s a miracle. We should be thankful to be able to live like the super wealthy did just a generation or two ago. The global air travel system is a modern miracle. A tremendous engineering, business and operational achievement.
He should have flown Etihad or Emirates or Singapore if he wanted luxury. You get what you pay for. Or, your employer gets what they pay for.
Enshitification was a term coined for the online space. There is even a Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
I will use their definition.
As I said, the term was intended for online business. But it fits so many more businesses. Any time you have a company cut costs by lowering the quality delivered to the customer, we have enshitification.
Delta first class meals are much better than this bowl of sadness.
Also, whenever I get the chance to eat one, it’s because I’ve been bumped up via an upgrade, so I’m not going to complain….
The frequency with which I get these upgrades also indicates that Delta is routinely having a hard time selling first class tickets. When I see the prices I’m not surprised.
Here’s a typical differential for a flight to NYC from Eugene OR (the airport I use)
Delta Main (steerage, sardine seating) $729
Delta Comfort (larger seats, up near the front) $879
Delta First (substantially larger seats, a meal with real cloth napkin!) $2621
I usually spring for Comfort, which puts me in line for an upgrade when they don’t sell all the First Class seats
Just did a little reading on this and several airlines are refitting their planes to eliminate first class and expand business class and “premium economy” which I think translates to what Delta calls “Comfort.”
I suspect with Delta, the frequent upgrades help them retain “comfort class” frequent (ish) flyers like me and increase loyalty (I do tend to book Delta even if there’s a somewhat cheaper seat on a different airline), so that may pencil out.