Last year, Ben from One Mile at a Time wrote a blog post titled ‘You Don’t Have To Be A Food Snob To Hate American’s New Catering‘ regarding his experience with the American Airlines snack basket sandwiches in the First Class cabin. He was appalled with his Turkey, Swiss, and Honey Mustard snack basket sandwich.
Image courtesy of One Mile at a Time
I’ve never actually had these sandwiches before because they mostly appear on short mid-con and red-eye flights. Almost all of my flights are transcontinental and international flights which come with full meal service. Back in October of 2014, Ben had a follow up post about ‘Positive American First Class Catering Changes Coming‘ which states that on flights of about 2:00 to 2:30 hours, American will offer warmed mixed nuts in addition to a redesigned snack basket containing only a choice of higher quality sandwiches, Milano cookies and bananas.
Fast forward to this past week when I was flying internationally on American Airlines from Miami to San Pedro Sula, Honduras in the Business Class cabin with a flight duration of 2 hours 30 minutes. I was presented with the infamous snack basket containing sandwiches, Milano cookies, and bananas. I chose the Curry Chicken sandwich on an Multigrain Oat Square bread.
It was basically two thin slices of deli meat on a bread roll which was quite similar to Ben’s sandwich except mine didn’t come with any cheese. It definitely didn’t taste like curry chicken or even resembles a curry chicken sandwich. It looked more like a honey mustard turkey sandwich.
When I flew the reverse, San Pedro Sula to Miami (SAP-MIA) in Business Class, I was offered the same selection of sandwiches from the snack basket. This time, I wanted to try out the Artichoke & Jalapeno Cream Cheese Croissant.
Basically it was a small bread roll with a processed cream cheese spread and was equally terrible.
The sandwiches were so tiny that the flight attendant passed by the cabin again and offered a second round of sandwiches.
Last year I flew the exact same flight from San Pedro Sula to Miami (SAP-MIA) in Business Class and had a full meal service. Since there were extras, the flight attendant offered me both meal choices!
The snack basket sandwiches have NOT improved despite last year’s announcement of ‘higher quality’ sandwiches. The new American Airlines snack basket sandwiches are utterly disgusting.
Have you tried the new ‘higher quality’ snack basket sandwiches recently?
The meal doesn’t matter. The only important question is: did you get a gooey cookie and if so did you accept it!? Because if so it means that AA cares.
But more seriously, what time of day were those flights? On my last flights HOU-central America on UA F mid morning and return mid afternoon all they offered was the dry snack basket.
there was no cookie on this <900 mile flight… MIA-SAP was a 11:15am departure and SAP-MIA was a 1:51pm departure.