American Airlines has resumed offering expresso coffee to premium cabin customers onboard selected aircraft types. American Airlines flicked the coffee machines off last April, ostensibly to remove weight from the planes and save on fuel costs. That excuse, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a false report. But that's all water under the bridge now (or coffee grinds down the drain!)

American Airlines turns the espresso machines back on

Gary Leff in View From The Wing reported on this story over the weekend, noting the coffee machines were back on across the domestic Boeing 777 and Airbus A321T fleet. And while the pod coffee is no great shakes in the coffee stakes, it's certainly better than that brewed muck airlines usually try to palm off onto passengers.

The perk will benefit very few passengers though - even before American Airlines moved to save a few bucks last April, espresso coffee was only available to first class passengers. Even then, it was rarely proactively offered. Passengers had to know the machines were onboard that particular aircraft type they were on and mostly had to ask for one.

As Leff notes, often the biggest users of the espresso machine were crew. It follows they probably missed the machines the most when American Airlines turned them off. When American Airlines decided to stop serving inflight espressos, they said it was "to help conserve fuel and prevent confusion about what services are currently offered."

Fair enough - you don't want any uppity business class passengers trying to cadge a half-decent coffee from an already overworked flight attendant. But the conserve fuel costs excuse was a bit of a porky. The cups, wands, and pods disappeared off the planes; however, the machines stayed onboard. Possibly disconnecting and removing the machines was more trouble than it was worth. But in hindsight, the espresso pause smacks more of a desire to cut inflight services and the cost of consumables rather than conserving fuel.

American's less than stellar catering reputation

American has a lousy reputation for inflight catering, particularly across its US domestic network. Like most of its competitors, the airline used the pandemic to cut back on catering and other inflight services. At first, this was for health and inflight hygiene reasons, but it soon became a blatant excuse to save some money and was one of many ongoing aviation news stories the pandemic produced

US carriers have gradually restored all or most of their pre-pandemic inflight catering offerings, but American Airlines has red-lighted itself as a reluctant laggard here. Two years after the onset of the pandemic, American Airlines is only just starting to get its food and beverage act together in its premium cabins. Further down the plane, where most passengers are, things remain fairly grim.

Up in regular domestic first class, American Airlines is serving meals on flights over 900 miles that operate during meal times and snacks on shorter flights. Down the back, American serves meals on domestic flights exceeding 2,200 miles, while shorter flights see non-alcoholic drinks and a snack offered. There are some exceptions to this rule - for example, Flagship Hawaii and transcontinental flights between selected cities. One thing we are sure of - flights attendants on American Airlines won't be offering economy class passengers on Boeing 777 or Airbus A321T an espresso anytime soon.

Source: View From The Wing