At the beginning of the month American cut ties with Gate Gourmet at LAX, which was the contractor they used to cater their flights. This was due to a listeria outbreak. Obviously this was completely outside of American’s control, though at the same time it inconvenienced passengers.
It was my understanding that American was proactively reaching out to customers to offer them compensation, and was doing everything they could to make the experience as pleasant as possible. It goes without saying that there are going to be some disruptions due to this, though, given the scale of the issue.
I haven’t been following this situation all that closely, given that it’s fluid and changing by the day. American also isn’t publishing much information about it. The way I see it, it’s on American to communicate with their passengers as to what’s going on. Given that it has been weeks, my assumption was that things are mostly back to normal.
Well, today I’m flying from Los Angeles to Toronto on American in Main Cabin Extra. As an Executive Platinum member I get a complimentary food item, and typically I find American’s buy on board food to be better than what they serve in first class.
The flight departed at 8:30AM, so I didn’t have breakfast before boarding. I had a couple of cups of coffee in the Admirals Club, but was saving my appetite for onboard. Well, I’m now airborne, and the crew has informed us that they have no food of any sort. No pretzels, no food for purchase, nothing. Not for economy, and not for first class.
If this is part of the catering problem I totally get it, but my issue is the lack of communication. I wasn’t sent an email prior to my flight, there was no announcement in the gate area about this, there was no cart in the jet bridge with snacks, etc. If they had communicated this at the gate passengers could have purchased something, but that wasn’t even an option here.
It’ll be around 5PM ET before I’m through immigration, so I guess I’ll get my first food of the day then. What a disappointing lack of communication on American’s part. Like I said, I get stuff happens, and I’d have no issues if they had just given people a heads up in the gate area (and as an economy passenger I don’t think I’d be due anything), but that didn’t even happen.
So this is a warning to anyone flying American out of LAX. While I know some/most flights are getting catering, it seems like not all flights are, so be sure you bring a snack just in case.
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