British Airways’ special meals policy
Rants April 9th, 2008This week I flew domestically within the UK and encountered British Airways’ strange special meals policy for the first time. According to their website:
Special meal requests cannot be made for travel on any of the following services: all UK Domestic flights, Euro Traveller flights from the UK to Paris, Luxembourg, Dusseldorf, Jersey, Cologne, Amsterdam & Brussels, and passengers travelling on any flight on a stand-by or waitlist basis.
That’s rather poor (and rather strange, if you ask me). Heck, in South Africa BA even have extra vegetarian meals on their domestic flights for those who haven’t requested them in advance. I’m not at all impressed, but unfortunately BA seem to be the only airline that fly from Gatwick to Manchester.
Update: If you ask, they do have vegetarian meals onboard, even if you can’t pre-book one.

May 13th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Wow, they have “extra” vegetarian meals and not just normal vegetarian meals in SA !!!
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Flying to Manchester! Tsk. Train is much nicer; you leave & arrive from the center of the city, and if you book 3 weeks in advance the tickets are even close to reasonably priced! Not to mention your carbon footprint…
July 26th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Yeah, you’re right - the train would be much nicer. Only crummy thing is that because of the schedules, I wouldn’t be able to get to work before 10:00am or so.
September 1st, 2008 at 12:13 pm
It’s 40 minutes from Gatwick to Manchester. How much meal do you need for 40 minutes? Get over it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Flying at 6:40am normally means I don’t have time to eat breakfast before I leave home, so being able to have a meal (albeit not a particularly tasty one) on the plane is rather handy.