2,000 Miles for Airline Meal Mishap

I’m a fan of American’s pre-order meal system on their website. If your upgrade clears prior to the 24 hour mark, or you purchase a First Class seat in advance, you can select what you’d like to eat on your flight. The pre-order option essentially guarantees that they won’t run out of your entree, which is a consistent issue in forward cabins as airlines don’t stock enough of every single meal for every passenger.

On a recent flight, I was looking forward to the Cheese Lasagna, which I had pre-ordered 3 days prior to the flight. When the flight attendant got to my row, she only offered a Chicken Masala, since they had run out of the lasagna. I informed her I pre-ordered the lasagna, and after double checking her records, she apologized that she didn’t have anymore onboard. While frustrated, I ordered the Masala anyway, and decided to complain to AA’s customer service team online.

I don’t want to be nit-picky, but felt that this was something AA needed to hear about, since the pre-ordering process is something designed to guarantee meals, and in this case, failed, since they had given away the pre-selected meal already.

A few days later, I received a response from AA customer service with 2,000 bonus miles posted to my account for the inconvenience.

The 2,000 miles is appreciative, but I hope this was just a fluke in their system and that the pre-order process improves. I’ve found three things to be the case with the new system:

• Either the pre-ordered meal is given, as noted.
• Either the flight attendant offers the choice of both meals, with no regard to pre-order.
• Either the flight attendant offers one meal, since the other option has run out.

Have you had any issues with American’s pre-order meal system in First Class?