Meals ordered pre-flight online

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  • Flightlevel
    Participant

    Interesting article on AusBT on how to order your meals before your longhaul flight on QF.
    It seems to work well – and for all classes on QF.
    Does anyone do that on other airlines and is it successful?


    rodders
    Participant

    hi
    I have used the QF pre-order service and it works well, plus they usually have an online special. I have also used it on BA and again works well, though they don’t offer an online special. It is also available on Qatar now as well.
    Enjoy


    openfly
    Participant

    The pre-order works well for me too. After eating in the lounge all I want is a salad. In BA Club World they only load three main course salads, so pre-ordering guarantees that I get a salad. Never failed. I gather that the pre-orders are over and above the standard loading.


    FDOS_UK
    Participant

    Just a note about BA pre-ordered meals, these are only available ex-London.

    On the return leg, it’s pot luck – I will be taking my own provisions into Club World tomorrow morning – some of the out station meals are vile.

    I agree the Qantas pre-prder service is good and the online specials are an innovative idea.


    rferguson
    Participant

    [quote quote=843116]The pre-order works well for me too. After eating in the lounge all I want is a salad. In BA Club World they only load three main course salads, so pre-ordering guarantees that I get a salad. Never failed. I gather that the pre-orders are over and above the standard loading.
    [/quote]

    You’ll be disappointed to hear that there is no main course salad option with the new Do&Co offering Openfly. The new service will be rolled out to quite a few more routes in JAN/FEB.


    openfly
    Participant

    @rferguson
    Oh goodness me, I suppose some 16 year old job-experience erk realised that it costs a penny more to produce and deliver the main course salad!
    It’s getting to the point where I buy the cheapest economy fare on BA and live with the discomfort. But I get the satisfaction that I am saving a fortune.


    rferguson
    Participant

    @ openfly – I know, the main course salad was generally my ‘go to’ as well. Saying that, I have to admit that the new catering is leaps and bounds ahead of the old catering. The packaged nuts, packs of salt and pepper have all gone and whilst I definitely won’t crow about it as its what most airlines have offered for an age, it’s a genuinely noticeable improvement.
    The quality, quantity, presentation and choice (despite the loss of the main course salad) of food have all really improved. Choice of starters and desserts have increased quite a bit and perhaps that’s been at the expense of our main course salad. The food is all prepared by Do&Co and is really far superior to the old slop. The execution is still bedding in. Currently it’s only on the JFK route and the duration for the main meal service is generally hovering around the 3hr mark on the outbound flights. A little too long for most on a 7/7.5hr flight. Now we just need the damned seat!


    BPP
    Participant

    Made the effort to use the Qatar system 10 days ago (DOH-LHR).
    Shame the Cabin crew seemed to know nothing about it!!
    BPP


    IanFromHKG
    Participant

    [quote quote=843116]I gather that the pre-orders are over and above the standard loading.
    [/quote]

    That may be true in the sense that they ensure the pre-orders are on board, but I can’t believe that they do this “over and above” the standard loading. We all know that BA stock as little as they can get away with as it is! I simply can’t believe they load the normal offering PLUS specific items for pre-orders… Perhaps you meant something different, but your phrasing seems to imply that this is what happens

    My own view on pre-prdering is that if it is available then, with one or two exceptions, it is a big mistake not to use it. I will come on to the exceptions later. My reasoning is that no airline wants to overcater (perfectly understandable, I might add) but this does mean that if a meaningful proportion of people do pre-order, the lottery of ‘loading versus preferences’ for the much smaller pool of people who haven’t pre-orderered makes it much more likely that you won’t get your preferred choice. The only way to ensure that you do get that choice is to pre-order. The more people that work this out, and do pre-order, the more the odds are skewed against those who don’t, therefore more people will tend to pre-order, and so on. I have seen this in practice on an AA domestic flight where I had pre-ordered, and my neighbour failed to get her first choice despite only being the third person to try to select on board.

    Some airlines also offer a significantly wider choice on pre-order than is available on board (SQ being probably the most famous example, but MH are the same (and I have used their pre-order system quite a few times), and as mentioned above QF offer one or two extra dishes). These alone may offer a good reason to pre-order.

    However, as noted above, there may be cases where it is not a mistake to pre-order – the most obvious of these is where none of the pre-order options is compelling enough (on paper/screen) to make a choice without having a chance to look at what is on offer. Funnily enough that is the option I faced most recently, and it was on QF. La famille were all due to head to Sydney from Boxing Day to New Year’s Day (that didn’t work out, for reasons unrelated to this thread). I went on to Manage Booking, saw the pre-ordering option (which, I am ashamed to say, I hadn’t noticed before) and looked at the choices. To be honest, it was more Hobson’s choice. Which of these am I least likely to hate??? I haven’t seen such pretentious twaddle or such bizarre food pairings since the last time I (a) went to a restaurant whose chef had lost himself up his own arse and (b) promised never to make that mistake again. I ended up selecting a pork dish (as did Junior Offspring) on the basis that it sounded slightly less awful than everything else. The Memsahib perused the selection and decided to opt for no meal at all. Senior Offspring was so unwell at the time that presenting her with food choices would just have been cruel.

    As it turned out, Senior Offspring and the Memsahib (who caught the same bug) were too ill to travel, which is why I am writing this at The Hong Kong Club over lunch rather than in Sydney by the pool.

    But back to the original question:

    “Interesting article on AusBT on how to order your meals before your longhaul flight on QF.
    It seems to work well – and for all classes on QF.
    Does anyone do that on other airlines and is it successful?”

    Yes, I do. Yes, it is successful in the sense that you get what you order. However, whether that is what you want??…. That’s a different question!


    rferguson
    Participant

    [quote quote=843116]I gather that the pre-orders are over and above the standard loading.[/quote]

    Actually, there is no surplus over the normal loading for pre-orders. So if the regular loading is three main course salads and two are pre-ordered that would leave one left for the onboard meal order.

    To be fair pre-ordered meals at BA has a pretty low uptake. Often their are none, sometimes one or two, rarely four or five.


    Derek1948
    Participant

    Strangely last month on BA Club World on an old 777-200, 4 Class, I had my first pre flight meal ordering experience. It worked perfectly well for both my wife and I. After the starter the FA came up and offered us our meals with the words, “you pre-ordered”. This was before the trolly started coming round with other peoples choices. A nice touch and believe it or not, the beef/steak was cooked really well and was extremely tasty. Flying in F this time next month on a BA A480 to Johannesburg we again have the option of pre-ordering. Even with 7 choices of a main course, not too much excites us so perhaps we should eat in the Concorde Room as the flight departs at 18.15?


    DavidGordon10
    Participant

    Air France do this in Business long-haul from CDG. Last time I requested the curry which was reasonable, and not under-seasoned like a typical French Fricassée à l’Indienne.

    More worrying was AF from BKK to CDG running out of white wine. How could that happen!

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