United Airlines is obviously not to familiar with the dollar menu at McDonald’s because they’re convinced that you’ll pay up to $9 for their “Buy-On-Board” snack offerings, says the Wall Street Journal.
The snacks, which include “fresh sandwiches, salads, snack boxes or snacks, depending on the length of flight,” will be complimentary for travelers in Business Class and cost coach fliers from $6 for “shelf stable items” to $9 for fresh items such as salads or sandwiches. This price increase will go into effect in October, about a month after United discontinues free snacks in coach. Previously, Business Class customers got free warm meals.
Are you going to pay $9 for a United Airlines sandwich?
United Airlines to Charge Up to $9 for Snacks [WSJ]
United Tests Food Choices in Business and Economy (Press Release) [MarketWatch]
(Photo: pwrplantgirl )
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How long until airlines start denying passengers the right to bring their own food on board in order to force them to buy the crappy, overpriced airline food. All the time screaming, “IT’S FOR SECURITY!!”
@catskyfire: At a ball park or amusement park, the only reason you’re paying those food prices is because you associate it with the fun of the event. Same reason you buy popcorn at the movie. It’s not like you can’t go that long without eating, it’s that you’re willing to pay to have peanuts or a Sno-Cone at the game.
But on an airplane? I expense my meals and I’m STILL not going to pay $9 for their damn sandwich. Add one more airline to the “do not book” list I put on my travel request forms.
Can they do this for transatlantic/transcontinential flights? I always assumed there was an FAA regulation about providing something to eat/drink on flights over X hours.
In closed economies, we pay all sorts of dumb prices. Ever pull money out of and ATM as a Casino? Ever buy a beer at a baseball, hockey, football, etc. game? Some will pay it, some will not. I assume the number crunchers have figured out that its worthwhile to charge more and risk more people brining their own food on.
FWIW- on Lan airlines (South America), I got a meal on every flight, even the 2 hour ones. It was pretty good too.
I can’t imagine being hungry enough to pay $9 for an airline sandwich. I wouldn’t pay that just out of principle.
I’m not going to be paying $9 either, but all you people ‘bringing your own food’ annoy the hell out of me. Granted, I usually fly first or business (lots of miles) but having someone bring a MCd’s bag on board is just rude, as it stinks and makes a mess (notice how I ate BEFORE boarding the plane and am not dropping lettuce all over your book).
No, I have other plans for that money. I’m turning part of it into quarters to flush down the john and the rest of it I was going to pound into a rathole.
NO. I wouldn’t even do it on my expense account!
@Inglix_the_Mad: Jersey Mikes Subs are the best- a little more expensive than the sub(standard)way stuff but you can resonably eat two meals from one giant sub.
I wonder if the airlines would kick you off for bringing and selling your own snacks onboard…
@Tedicles: Just wait until the onions and limburger cheese crowd starts up. Maybe someone could bring a 10lb spicy bolonga to cut up and dish out- oh wait no more knives…
And united airlines is so bad there is a website untied.com all about their bad service…
I’m a captive audience. If I’m hungry enough, I’ll pay $9.
“Are you going to pay $9 for a United Airlines sandwich?”
Hell to the no. I rarely ate airplane food when it was free, I’m sure as hell not going to pay for the privilege!
@mythago:
Depends on the amusement park. For those who live near them and have passes, it isn’t a big deal to leave to go eat. For me, it’s a journey to get to one, and I’m there for 8 hours. I have to eat somewhere in there, usually a couple of times. It’s not just about fun, but hunger.
Of course I’m not gonna pay $9 for an airplane sandwich, but what’s the big deal? Like catskyfire said above, stadiums are even worse and at least you can bring your own food on the plane. Works for me.
Well, yeah, if I don’t have time to grab something to eat between connections, I’ll pay what I have to pay. Sure, $9 is a lot for food, but if I can afford to fly, then I can begrudgingly afford $9 when I need to.
I wish that AA would offer their better (more expensive) snacks on their flights less than 3.0 hours. It really, really sucked last time when I didn’t have time to grab something in Dallas, and all they could sell me were damned chocolate chip cookies and trail mix. I was captive! I would have paid!
Southwest is the way to go. On a trip from Austin to Vegas last week we got several free snacks (peanuts, Cheese Nips), free drinks, and if you’re a frequent customer you get free alcoholic drink tickets. Clutch.
Whenever I fly from Honolulu to the mainland at night on United, the salads/sandwiches are $5 (clearanced!). The salads are all right; they mix a bunch of stuff with lettuce and they kind of all go together to make a good salad, except whoever makes their salads is in dire need of a salad spinner.
Usually, my connecting flights are so close together that I don’t have time to stop and grab a bite to eat, let alone carry with me 15 hours of food when I’m traveling to the east coast. The same salad I paid $5 for a week before is now $7 during the day and just as wet.
Nine bucks for wet lettuce is pushing it too far. Anyone want part of my PB&J?
I’ve always wondered if hotels/airlines/ballparks (i.e. closed enconomies) have ever tried selling food for reasonable prices just to see if the quantity sold makes up for the lower profit margin per item. My guess is that they have, otherwise, why would they avoid what could be a huge supplemental source of revenue?
Many times while traveling on my own dime, I’ve been tempted to order room service until I see that a hamburger will cost $20, in which case, I’ll usually either tough it out or go out to eat. While I understand that many of these closed economy venues cater to expense accounts, I once ran a $20 hamburger through an expense account and I could have sworn that the $7 hamburger at the chain bar & grill would have tasted better (and that’s not saying much).
i DO have a medical condition and have to eat small meals every few hours. and yes, that means getting up in the middle of the night too, so a 6 hour flight is too long.
because you never know when emergencies, accidents and delays will happen [in the airport or just in life] i ALWAYS have food with me and won’t be paying $9 for a nasty rubbery sandwich on an airplane.
however, i am anticipating the day they charge me a ‘snack carry on fee’ that can only be waived with a letter of medical necessity from my doctor
also i can forsee coming soon:
fee to fill your own water bottle at the drinking fountain inside the terminal
fee if your carry on doesn’t fit under the seat in front of you and needs to be stored in the overhead bin
use of in flight restroom fee [please insert 25 cents for non potable water to wash your hands afterwards too!]
just wait until they start charging for toilet paper!!!!
Since when is a sandwich considered a snack?
$9 for meal doesn’t sound crazy if it’s actually worth eating.
@catskyfire:
I’ll happily budget more time and more money to take the train over flying. To me it’s as much about enjoying the journey and being relaxed, as it is about actually getting somewhere. We seemed to forget somewhere (and the airlines certainly did) that we’re the customers here and to quote United directly “we understand that you have a choice”
The best airline food I ever got was a chicken burrito thing in business class on a Canadian Air flight from DFW to Calgary. It was so good I wanted another one. I guess I would pay $9 for two, but not for one and I’ve never had any other business/coach class airline food or snack I would pay anything extra for.
@Poster99: nothing United has ever served, even in First Class, was cost them $9 to make let alone was worth eating. I stopped flying United years ago and have been happier for it.
@Poster99:
And how long do you think it will be before that tasty looking snack box with all the cute extras will turn into those plates of slop that we used to get for free?
This is just another reason I’m glad I fly Southwest. No stupid fees and you get a snack.
Bringing your own food from home sounds like a good idea until the TSA Dictators-In-Training start confiscating them as being a security threat.
Heck, if I worked for the TSA, I’d stop bringing my own lunch! “Sorry, sir, but your food looks delicious-I-mean-dangerous.”
@darkryd:
right…and when will they start charging us for that?
I have to fly United at Thanksgiving. Granola bars and PB&J the whole way, baby. I’ll have to pay for an overpriced, oversized bottle of water in the airport, but I can live with that. Better an extra $3 at the airport store than $9 for a tuna salad. I mean, I live in Manhattan, and I don’t pay that for a tuna salad.
The captain is God. I am waiting for the Captain to announce he is accepting orders for Domino’s to be delivered to the plane….. cause he doesn’t want to PAY for his “warm sandwich” from the airline.
@PDX909: FWIW, while Amtrak is a great alternative for travel in certain areas (I use it exclusively for anywhere in New England or the mid-Atlantic states, down to DC), service interruptions in other areas don’t make it feasible, and if you’re traveling more than seven hours by train, you might want to suck it up and deal with the airline. It would take me two days to get home for Thanksgiving via train — therefore, I have to suck it up and deal with United. But not their snack prices.
Yeah, I’ll just be stopping at the local hoagie shop on the way to the airport where I can guarantee the freshness of a sandwich that is probably bigger than that provided by the airline and cheaper. A good sized hoagie can last for a couple meals.
When did the pricing model for flying ever make sense? Wouldn’t we all pay more for the ticket with bigger seats and included meals? If not, quit complaining. Flying is not a right – It is a luxury item. Deal with the “inconveniences” of flying because it is ultimately the best transportation choice, bar none. We certainly have the right to fly first class or on our own private GV jet, don’t we? Of course there are basics that could be done better for us “normal” citizens who have to cry about flying coach, but even with all the bad it is still an incredible value.
Well, they already tossed any kind of good customer service out the window, why not rape them more.
@balthisar: Isn’t it convenient that AA’s hub in Dallas is less than 3 hours from most of its destinations? I love how they say the flight is only 2 hours, 50 minutes, so just the cheap snacks, but then headwinds or other delays cause the flight to turn into 3 1/2 hours. sorry, no sandwich for you.
The other issue with these meals is that they cater to adults, not to kids. When the airlines served actual meals, one could request a kids meal ahead of time. When I had to flight AA recently, I already had to bring food for my kids on the flight. Not much more difficult to bring my own as well.
@robocop_is_bleeding: Yeah, I’m just waiting for some enterprising airline shill terrorist to try to smuggle through some C4 in a BLT, and a detonator in a bag of Doritos. Then we’re all in for it.
To those wondering why they don’t just raise ticket prices to include these costs, there is a very simple explanation. The airlines make a VERY large portion of their revenue from ticket buying sites like Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, etc.
The first person to raise their base ticket prices to cover these things IMMEDIATELY takes a big ticket sales hit because people will filter them out when scanning the ticket prices. So they tack on all these fees in order to remain competitive at the actual point of purchase.
As for whether I will buy food on the flight? Hell no. I’ll bring my own and fill up my water bottle at the gate.
God I hope they don’t put these flight attendants on any sort of commission…I’m sure they hate this change as much as we do but the second they get pushy with this stuff is the second they’ll have to land and have a plane full of pissed passengers arrested.
@imdgonz:
No, it’s not an incredible value any more. It’s money grubbing and opportunistic BS is what it is. I haven’t noticed anyone backing off these surcharges now that the market price of oil is back down to $120 a gallon.
Thank all that is good and decent that most of my flights are trans-Pacific. I have choices like ANA, Thai, Singapore, etc. Now if America would open up the market so that these fine airlines can fly that final leg Chicago to Nashville instead of United…
@bigvicproton: At Logan in Boston, theres a flight food cooking place right at the airport. So its basically cook and put on the plane. Any other airports have this?
@pb5000: The bottle of water would fall under “avoiding worker’s comp claims” as not drinking in Vegas heat can seriously mess you up.
@pda_tech_guy: Yeah, but beer is $4.00 in a bar, and a sandwich is like $3.50.
@jimv2000: Because on Travelocity, Expedia, etc. people will buy the cheapest flight. By shifting money from fares to fees it makes them look like a bigger value.
@Inglix_the_Mad: Ahhh Cousins Subs, how I miss having one (Moved from AZ to MD)
How about I buy my own snacks at Costco and resell them on the plane?
I’d rather use the $9 to buy McDonald’s in the terminal. If you’ve had the “chicken” sandwich on Continental’s flights, you’d know where I’m coming from. It is possibly the worst food I’ve ever eaten on an airline. Blech!
Only if its made by Subway, toasted, comes with a fountain soda and chips.
Just you wait, soon there is going to be a “terrorist” trying to get a bomb on board a plane hidden in a sandwich, and all of a sudden you’re not going to be able to bring outside food through airport security. And there will be some plot involving water fountains, so those will be gone, too (and restroom taps, replaced with hand sanitizer).
@Haltingpoint:
Then Orbitz and Travelocity and Expedia have the power to fix this.
Buying a sandwich at 40,000 feet is very different from buying something at ground level.
If United wants to make this offering, go for it $9 doesn’t sound criminal to me, esp for the convenience of it. A hot-dog can cost 50cents at a gas station but $6 at a ball park (your so called “dome dogs”). Same processed hot dog different price for convenience.
If it’s $5 footlongs and $1 McDos value meal you want get it at the terminal, insert in bag and eat during the flight.
I just got back from flying Southwest for my honeymoon and they were practically begging passengers on the flights to take as many of the free snacks as they wanted.
When will this dinosaur finally become extinct?
If you’re making millions of dollars every year by running an airline into the ground over and over while getting bailed out constantly like the feds, a $9 snack is probably right in your budget range.
I will “gladly” pay them Tuesday for a puny ass ham sandwich today… or will I?
Stupid TSA regulations…