The state of air travel is deplorable – if I were still a travel writer I would devote myself to writing all about it. But today I’m the publisher of humane.beings.com, so I’ll just talk about in-flight meals.
I’ve recently flown on Delta and United, and on neither could I order a vegan or even vegetarian meal. I used to order them all the time (as I said I was a travel writer for 25 years). On both flights there was nowhere to preorder a special meal. I called Delta and they said I would be able to order one 24 hours before the flight, but that never happened. One of the choices on the flight was vegetarian, which I thought was standard operating procedure. On United, you can apparently order meals in advance on “selected” flights – which didn’t include mine. But to my surprise, the United flight to Europe had only two choices: chicken or lasagna with beef. The “breakfast” was as animal-unfriendly as possible – turkey sausage, spicy cheese and egg on a (wait for it) waffle (I think they’re trying to give us heart attacks as well).
At this point in commercial aviation, passengers are at the mercy of the airlines. They give us what they want and usually make us pay for it. There is much touting of mileage clubs and loyalty programs, but the airlines seem to think loyalty goes only one way. About 4.3 million Americans are vegetarian, 3.7 million are vegan. And the numbers are increasing. We are no longer on the fringe. Plant-based is mainstream. These are significant numbers. Yet the trend among airlines seems to be to ignore us.
Write to your airlines – especially if you are a frequent flyer. Since the airlines do what they want, though, better pack your own vegetarian/vegan meal.
