This is of absolutely no consequence (at least to me), though curiosity is getting the best of me…
American’s continental breakfast quirk
I fly American a lot domestically, given that I live in Miami, and the airline dominates the airport. I know American’s first class meal service all too well, as there really isn’t much variety. There’s the short rib, the grains bowl, the golden chicken, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, I just returned from Salt Lake City to Miami in American first class. This is quite a long domestic flight, at 2,088 miles — it departs at 7:59AM and arrives at 2:42PM, and it’s blocked at 4hr43min. Prior to the flight I went online to pre-order my meal (as American typically allows within 30 days of departure), but that wasn’t an option for this particular flight.
I found that to be strange, since in my experience that’s possible on all meal flights, and American serves meals on all mealtime flights of over 900 miles. So I went to look at the flight description, and noticed that the flight was listed as serving continental breakfast in first class, rather than the typical full breakfast.
I was curious if this was a glitch. Well, it wasn’t. Once onboard, there was no choice of breakfast, with the “continental breakfast” consisting of an oatmeal container, some grapes, cheese, and crackers, a banana, and a lemon berry chia loaf slice.
Does anyone know the logic for this?
As I said at the beginning of the post, I’m purely asking about this out of curiosity, as I don’t fly American first class for the food. When there is a choice, I typically select the more “continental” option anyway, as I avoid American’s egg dishes, which are typically not great.
But in all my years of flying American, I think this is the first time I’ve ever had a flight where the only meal was continental breakfast. Does anyone know why that is?
My best theory is that it has something to do with outstation catering at Salt Lake City Airport. The plane sits overnight in Salt Lake City, and the way the meal is prepared suggests to me that this was all catered in Miami the day before, and American simply doesn’t want to pay to cater the aircraft in Salt Lake City. After all, everything was in containers, and didn’t require refrigeration.
But what I’m curious about is why American seems to specifically do this in Salt Lake City? There are plenty of other outstations where the airline serves a full breakfast, even though planes sit overnight. Seattle to Dallas? Breakfast. Tampa to Chicago? Breakfast. Austin to Chicago? Breakfast. Newark to Phoenix? Breakfast. San Antonio to Charlotte? Breakfast. I think y’all get the point. 😉
The only other context in which I’ve seen continental breakfast in a premium cabin on American is on select long haul flights, where it’s served as a pre-landing meal (like Honolulu to Dallas).
So I’m curious. Does Salt Lake City just have the highest catering costs in the country for American? Is Delta sabotaging American at its hub, somehow? Are there any other outstations with a similar setup?
Bottom line
I fly American all the time, and I’ve only ever seen the airline serve a full breakfast on flights of over 900 miles. For whatever reason, American doesn’t serve its typical breakfast on flights out of Salt Lake City, but rather just has a continental breakfast, with no options.
It seems that this is because American doesn’t want to cater the aircraft in Salt Lake City, even though the plane sits there overnight. American planes are catered at outstations across the country, so I’m curious what makes Salt Lake City special.
Anyone want to take a stab at this?