United Airlines Now Offers Digital Food + Beverage Menus
United Airlines now offers you a preview of what to expect on your flight in terms of food and drinks with flight-specific digital menus available online for every flight.
Digital Menus Now Available From United Airlines – Know What Food And Drink Will Be Served On Your Next Flight
With the elimination of the print edition of Hemispheres Magazine and an increasing focus on digitalization, United will make a complete menu available online for each flight in all cabins of service.
A memo reviewed by Live And Let’s Fly explains:
“In addition to the printed menus available on board, the digital menu is available for all cabins on all flights. A general menu will be viewable up to a year in advance so customers who are booking flights can see what kind of experience they can expect, and the actual menu will be available anywhere from 75 to 45 days before departure once the menu is finalized. The menu can be viewed while in flight. On flights with meal service, please make the following announcement to encourage customers to view the menu: “If you would like to see what we’ll be serving on board, today’s menu can be found on united.com or in the United app for your convivence. Simply navigate to Flight Status > Inflight Menu.”
Indeed, when you navigate to the flight status page on united.com and pull up a flight, you now see a new link that includes flight-specific menu information:
You can also see a “view menu” link if you pull up your reservation:
And on the app:
That takes you to a page in which you can view the menus in all cabins of service:
It even includes the full wine list in Polaris Business Class:
screenshots: United
Over time, United will add allergy information about each dish (it would be great to see nutrition facts and ingredients as well…). It will also add these menus to its seatback screens. No timeline for either initiative has been announced.
As an aside, Continental Airlines used to offer menus online prior to its merger with United Airlines, such that you always knew what to expect when traveling in BusinessFirst.
This is an excellent effort to help passengers better prepare for their flights, especially when traveling in economy class, and is the sort of low-hanging fruit that adds value and creates the perception of a more quality experience. It also holds flight attendants accountable to offer the full service (i.e. that midflight snacks are available).
CONCLUSION
United Airlines now offers digital menus with food and beverage offerings on all flights. Over time, this will expand to seatback screens and will also include additional allergen information.
This is a great move from United and I’m pleased to see this roll out not just for business class, but for all cabins.