After I booked up my trip to the US on American Air and their oneworld partner British Airways, I received an email from AA inviting me to pre-select my meal on one of the segments on the trip, which was going to be a lunch flight from Seattle to Dallas/Fort Worth. This feature is still experimental so only on a few flights do passengers get the option to pre-select their entrees. Obviously, I was going to take this experiment for a test-drive. Here are snapshots of what came my way on the particular flight:

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

So, when I did select the entree here and took the screenshots, I felt like some Salmon. However, later during my travels, I felt like figuring out another experiment, of how would the Butter Chicken really taste about 9,000 miles away from home. Also, being away from home for a short while, I thought it might be nice to taste a tangy curry after eating American style and other cuisines over the week. I thought lets see how the Americans do some Indian curry.

However, on the day of the flight, the flight attendant serving First came around taking meal orders and referred to the meal option as Chicken Curry. That should have been my cue on changing my mind, however, I told her I’d go ahead with my pre-order.

Now, this is what turned up:

For those of you who haven’t had Butter Chicken, here is a random sample picture off the internet which should be the generally acceptable definition of the promised entree:

This one is made with soft pieces of chicken, cooked for long in a gravy which consists of cashew paste and obviously, butter. BUT, this was nowhere close to that. This was nowhere even close to anything that AAdvantageGeek showcased in his photoseries on the new entrees. This was not even a curry, but a few rubbery pieces of chicken which were maybe overcooked. Now, we can’t blame this on the ovens or the food tasting different at 35,000 feet. I’ve had better curries in the air, and even BA had good curries on their World Traveller (Economy) section. Have a look…

It is not like I have not eaten Indian food abroad. I’m frequently entrusted with the responsibility to order food for 15-20 people when I travel on work and my local colleagues all want to try out some Indian cuisine. I’ve eaten thick bread which is passed as Indian naan, oversweet food sometimes for ‘keep it less spicy’, but at least all the time they get the ingredients and the recipes right. In this case, it was a whole different ballgame altogether. Even food in Air China Y was better!

I simply cannot fathom why do airlines approve meals which their caterers cannot make or they do not have the resources to execute on a regular basis. Have you had experiences with a meal gone wrong on a flight, like totally? Do write in…

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unbundle

/ˌʌnˈbʌndl/verb [T] COMMERCE, MARKETING

Definition

› to start to sell a product or service separately when previously it had been sold together with others.

You just saw the definition of unbundling as published in the Cambridge dictionary. Now, this one is going to play out soon by a ‘full-service airline’ in India called Jet Airways.

This report published in an English daily a couple of days ago indicates the plans Jet Airways has going forward to increase its ancillary revenue. It says:

After low cost carriers, Indian full service airlines are also going to offer passengers the option of pre-booking their desired cuisine for a fee instead of being forced to eat whatever is served without any extra charge.

India’s biggest private airline, Jet Airways, is planning to offer a range of cuisines like Italian, Chinese or continental to passengers who can book it in advance for a payment of about $10 (about Rs 560). While this option will be to both domestic and international flyers, the free regular meal service will remain for all those who do not wish to pay extra on a full service airline.

It further goes on to say…

The other areas being looked at for this purpose are – charging for pre-selection of seats and offering specialized services at airports like faster check-ins. Jet may offer business lounge access to economy passengers also for a fee.

“We plan to use technology to the fullest so that the overall convenience level for passengers goes up. Beyond that if a passenger is looking for any special service, there can be charge for that,” said sources.

Now, I would be very interested in seeing how this new meal is going to play out, because I have been criticizing Jet Airways’ meals right here on the blog for a few months now since they no longer look like they were before. The discussion on frequent flyer boards is a suspicion that the new ‘exotic’ meal will then be a good meal, and slowly and steadily the free meal will be cut down even more to be made a sandwich, maybe, and the full meal will be sold going forward. Now, is that going to be the only differentiation between JetKonnect and Jet Airways, then this is no longer going to be a Full-Service airline in my eyes.

How will frequent flyers be treated is going to be an issue of concern as well. Jet Airways Platinum elites get to select their seats free of cost as of now, apart from other services like free printouts on the airports and so on. Will the elites be given the choice to have these ‘better’ meals for free on board, a-la American Airlines, which anyways tries to offer the top-tier elites a complimentary upgrade to domestic First Class, and if not, offers them a choice of buy-on-board food and beverages.

The other amusing part for me is the bit on offering lounge access to economy passengers. Last I checked, Jet Airways’ own lounges hardly exist in Indian airports, and they use contract lounges (and restaurants disguised as lounges) most of the places they fly from. So, will they be charging passengers to offer them access to contract lounges? Especially when some of these lounges may have free access via a credit card anyways?

Lets see how this plays out, and if Jet Airways will have this offering up and running by then, I’d like to try this at least one time to see how the offering will be.

Will you pay? Let me know below:

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Related Posts:

• Snack is the new dinner on Jet Airways?
• Jet Airways follows the Olive theory, axes the meal service bit-by-bit

Live From A Lounge is also present on Facebook, Twitter and available via RSS.

• Introduction
• Check-in: British Airways Galleries Lounge, Mumbai
• Check-in: Clipper Lounge First Class, Mumbai
• Airborne: Flight CX 750 (BOM-BKK), Cathay Pacific, Economy
• Millennium Hilton Hotel, Bangkok
• Around Bangkok
• Hilton Hotel, Pattaya
• Around Pattaya
• Radisson Suites, Bangkok
• Check-in: Japan Airlines Sakura Lounge, Bangkok
• Check-in: British Airways/Qantas First Class Lounge, Bangkok
• Check-in: Cathay Pacific First & Business Class Lounge, Bangkok
• Airborne: Flight CX 709 (BKK-BOM), Cathay Pacific, Economy
• Conclusion

The flight I was booked on was CX 750, a hopping service from Mumbai, which flies to Bangkok and then over to Hong Kong. After buying my tickets online, I tried to assign seats via the Manage my booking feature, however seems like after the reservation systems upgrade CX had earlier this year they did not have a functional system to manage bookings while still providing the elite benefits to oneworld alliance members. I eventually had to call for seat assignments, but I got the best seats at the back of the plane assigned to us. While up to it, I also enquired about an upsell and was informed that Cathay does not offer upsell to Business Class on this route. The Business Class product, as per the seatmap and SeatGuru is an angled product, one of the older planes in the Cathay Pacific fleet.

Mumbai(BOM) – Bangkok(BKK)
Wednesday, June 27 2012
Depart: 5:20AM
Arrive: 11:25AM
Duration: 4hr35min
Distance flown: 1,885 miles
Aircraft: Airbus 330-300 (with 2-class regional product)
Seat: 54A (Economy, Extra Leg Room)
Meal Service: Breakfast

After lounge hopping at the British Airways Galleries Lounge and the Clipper First Class lounge, I was only too sleepy and I just wanted to get to my seat and go off to sleep. However, looked like the airline had other plans and boarding was delayed by about 15-20 minutes. Everytime I am flying outside India from Mumbai, or most other Indian airports, I am wondering why are night take-offs not banned or controlled in India. It would be so much better for my sleep.

Anyways, I was over at the boarding queue and Cathay Pacific staff was still not ready. The only announcements I heard for the next 20 minutes were for people to stay seated so that they could organise the boarding. And then, about 5-6 staffers came out with various boards in their hands to facilitate zone wise boarding. Flying from India, you’ll notice Indian airlines do not enforce it, but airlines not from India still do want to have segmentation. I waited till they made the first boarding calls and then proceeded to board the plane after the families with children boarded, and with the business class passengers / Cathay’s Marco Polo members.

Priority Boarding

We were greeted by the purser and directed to our seats at the back. The economy segment of this regional configuration is in a 2-4-2 configuration and I was going to be in the last section of the plane, right next to the emergency exit, while my brother got 54C which is marked as a extra legroom seat.

54A & 54C

Economy Cabin

View from the window

Duvets, pillows and earphones were provided already. Since boarding was started with delay, it was going to be a delayed take-off. People kept coming for the next 20 minutes or so, and then the cabin crew started to prepare the cabin for take-off. We were all handed out the arrival cards for Thailand Immigration, and at this point I asked the steward if I could also get Priority Lane passes for the visa queue. He replied that he will check with the in-flight manager and come back to me later, however, no body approached me at anytime later to either respond to my request in the affirmative or negative. Surprisingly, the in-flight manager did send across a couple of bottles of Evian water for us, so now that I think about it, I am sure there was some confusion between the request for priority lane passes and water. Someone surely heard something wrong here.

The entertainment screen, as is usual for emergency exit seats and bulkhead seats, was under the seat and I pulled it out to set to the airshow, only to realise that there was going to be no audio-video on demand on this plane.

Airshow

In spite of being an old product, what was nice about this flight was that there was in-seat power in every seat. My phone was dying so I plugged in the adaptor and let my phone charge (in switched-off mode!). When the flight was ready to take off, the crew asked me and my brother to stow our screens, however, seems like someone locked the screens so hard, that it was almost impossible to remove them from their stowage compartments under the seat without application of force. A couple of crew members struggled for a bit after take-off since the screen wouldn’t slide out usually, and I am happy to report they could retrieve it with application of muscle power and without breaking it up. I’m sure this was a part of their crew training

I think I just about caught the movie, The Proposal, from the beginning and decided to stick with it, even though I found it sloppy the first time around. The IFE catalogue did not offer much hope at this moment and only a few of the entire list of IFE channels were functional.

Meal service begin soon after and the trolley rolled by close to start the service from our row. The special meals went first, and then we were asked for our choice of meals. I went with the non-vegetarian option, which was primarily an egg omelette with chicken sausages and beans, some fruit, yoghurt and croissants. Just about the right portion to start the day. I chose to go with some apple juice to start the day. Who wants Heineken at this hour of the day anyways.

Movie and breakfast

A nice breakfast

Considering just a week before this flight I was on an international flight of Jet Airways with a very snacky dinner flight, this looked like a generous portion. Funnily enough, on the return flight, Cathay would undo the karma and offer me some of the blandest food on a flight, ever.

After the meal service, I could quickly stretch out, since the exit doors on this plane had some of those big chutes for slide deployment built into the door, which made for a lie-flat in the economy section for me. Yes, I could practically sleep with my legs outstretched on this.

My lie-flat in Economy

The rest of the flight was very uneventful, and at some point of time I managed to shut eye for an hour or more, only to be woken up by the announcement from the captain about the descent. The scheduled landing was at 11:25 AM, however, with the delayed take-off we were now looking to land at 11:45 AM and we got out of the plane by 12:00 hours.

Since I did not have the priority lane passes and I had to obtain visa on arrival, me and my brother practically ran after we got out the plane. However, as luck would have it, we spent about two hours finally getting out of the airport since the Visa on Arrival queue was so long, and still, the immigration officers wanted to have a lazy lunch while the queue went hungry around here. Our checked-in bag, I am sure was bored going around the carousel for a longish period of time with no one to get it.

Since I was going to be back at the airport in the evening as well (to pick up my parents arriving from Delhi), we decided to use the BTS and Airport train system to get to our hotel, but grabbed a quick bite before we went on the train. Overall, it was a good flight and I was looking forward to exploring Thailand over the coming days.

Related Posts:

• Snack is the new dinner on Jet Airways?
• The smallest and most tasteless economy meal award goes to Cathay Pacific

Live From A Lounge is also present on Facebook, Twitter and available via RSS.