United Airlines Adds Additional First Class Meal Service While American Takes Away

Posted on FlyerTalk this morning from UA Insider (a representative of United Airlines):

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Hi everyone,

We’ve heard you loud and clear, so we’re cooking up a new and improved onboard dining experience. After a thorough menu review and extensive research, we will be making a multi-million dollar investment in our onboard food and beverage options through mid-2015, introducing improvements in all of our cabins. We’ve already begun to make immediate changes to menu items that you’ve told us need to be addressed. See below for the full details.

Mainline premium cabins within the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, and most of Mexico:

• New short and mid-haul salads and sandwiches: Between August and September we are introducing all-new gourmet salads and sandwiches, which will be served chilled or warmed depending on flight distance and departure time. These new meals will be offered during lunch and dinner times on flights between 900 and 1,299 miles, and during lunch time on flights between 1,300 and 2,299 miles. Prior to your meal we will continue to offer our signature warmed nuts with a beverage of your choice. All freshly prepared salad and sandwich entrees will be paired with a gluten-free soup, bread, and a warmed cookie for dessert.
• Sparkling wine in North America: Beginning this fall, we will introduce Prosecco sparkling wine in our North America mainline premium cabins.
• Refresh for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack flights: Through 2015 we will be changing the menus for remaining markets.
• Expansion of meals to shorter-haul flights: Stay tuned for more information as we will be reintroducing full meal service on additional shorter haul flights during meal times. We will continue to offer full meals on flights that currently receive a full meal service in the following markets which are less than 900 miles: Chicago to/from Boston, Denver, New York/La Guardia and Newark, Denver to/from Houston Intercontinental and Los Angeles, and Newark to/from Atlanta (effective November 2014).
• Increased menu variety: We will be increasing the frequency of menu changes so that you see new options more often.

United Express premium cabins:

• Significant improvements on the way: While we can’t share the full details yet, let’s just say there will be a nice upgrade to premium cabin dining on United Express in 2015 by introducing fresh meal options.

United Economy on long-haul international flights:

• Enhanced food and beverage options in 2015: More details to come, but we’ll also be improving the food and beverage experience in United Economy on long-haul international flights as well.

We’ll keep you posted through the coming months as you begin to see these investments in the onboard dining experience come to fruition.

UA Insider

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I don’t fly United, but it’s interesting for United to start this in the wake of American announcing cuts to their First Class meal service. I’m curious as to whether United is trying to compete, and what success this will have on their already failing business.

What do you think of the changes?