What is a meal? Is it negotiable?

An airline is obliged to offer assistance in the form of refreshments and meals after 2 hours when the flight is less than 1500km.

What does this mean and how is it delivered?

An airline could bring around a drinks trolley and sandwiches or it could give you each a voucher.

The regulation doesn’t go into detail as to the extent of the fare that should be given save that it should be commensurate with the delay. Whether the offer of meals and refreshments extends to pre-packaged sandwiches and bottled water or to meal vouchers at airport eateries will depend upon the airline.

Perhaps the type of cuisine offered is a reflection of how much the airline appreciates you as a customer.

We would be interested in your feedback to Flightmole.com

What if the airline does not volunteer assistance which is clearly their responsibility to provide?

Are you in a position say after a 5 Hour delay to decide that you will visit the Airport's best eating establishment and order a meal for you and your family. If you are in Paris or Rome why not order a bottle of (say not too-expensive wine).

Could you then present the bill to the airline for reimbursement?

This is clearly a case of an airline offering the minimum that they think passengers will accept compared with what a passenger might expect as reasonable and ordinary.

What if a passenger has special dietary or medical needs? A diabetic for example or a confirmed glutton?

What is a meal-expand your horizons and possibly your waistband

As you can see the regulation only relates the type of meal or refreshment to the length of the delay. Therefore the inference if any which can be gleaned is that this relates to the quantity rather than the quality of assistance available.

As is often the case where there is a void in interpretation this invites one side to attempt to fill the void with their "best interpretation" of the lack of detail.

Yet why should this be a game only one side is able to play?

An airline will naturally attempt to offer the minimum that it has to. However, as in any negotiation, you can provide a counter-offer.

Therefore if you encounter a 5 Hour delay why not say to the airline that you intend to take a meal at the airport restaurant and say that you will limit yourselves to the fixed price menu of say £15 per person. Your family of 4 would like payment for the £60.

Is this an unreasonable demand? Is it any less reasonable than being offered a pre-packed sandwich and bottled water?

Just because a Petrol Station in the UK pronounces that a repacked sandwich and a packet of crisps as a "meal deal" don’t you yet secretly smile at the audacity of the claim of this being a proper “meal”.

In some respects who takes the initiative in making the first move may have the slight advantage. If an airline makes no move to offer any form of nutritional assistance by approaching the airline first with your offer of the airport meal may have greater force. The airline then would seek to counter-offer with a £5 voucher each-yet this will not cover the cost of even the fixed price meal at the restaurant.

Incidentally if you travel through France or Italy do petrol stations dare to describe pre-packaged sandwiches and cans of tango as a meal.

Why an airline is likely to prefer to be invisible when there is a delay.

Perhaps a deficiency within the regulation is to impose a duty upon the airline to have a responsible representative able to field questions and requests from the passengers.

Say there is a delay- the airline should not just be under a duty to inform the passengers of their rights but also that at least one representative from the airline should be responsible for dealing with the assistance to the passengers.

That single person would be responsible for fielding these types of questions and requests from the passengers and also would distribute and organize assistance.

A single responsible person would then need to be empowered and responsible to distribute assistance but also be responsible on behalf of the airline for the decisions made.

We can see that many airlines would prefer to shun such visibility. The airline would then be too accessible to the passenger cadre in real time to enforce their rights.

Taking the restaurant meal example above a single representative would be exposed to negotiate the individual demands of the passengers. The airline would be accessible to this negotiation.

If the airline remains anonymous it can seek to impose its own "perceived wisdom" of what is "reasonable" in any given circumstance.

How do you deal with this situation of the invisible airline?

You may need to take the initiative and take the initiative in real time

Somebody at the airline is responsible and is empowered with that discretion.
A passenger needs to find that person and make that person visible and take the initiative.

Therefore returning to our 5 hour delay example you need to find the responsible airline person and state this is your view of what is a meal and refreshments in relation to the delay you are experiencing.

You regard the compensation as £60 (4 meals at £15). Will they pay that in advance so you can go to the restaurant with your family?

Perhaps the airline offers 4 x £5 meal vouchers.
You could insist upon the reasonableness of your position.
You could compromise
You could accept the £20 worth of vouchers but reserve the right to claim form the airline the total meal cost.

Next time you are delayed try this and tell us how you fared. After all it is one way to pass the time whilst you are delayed.

If you don’t ask you won’t get. What may inhibit the airline is the mini precedent value of your negotiation being successful and worse still visible to hungry passengers. If there is a full flight of 150 passengers this may cost the airline £1500 plus if your fellow passengers ride in your slipstream.

Heck you could be the most popular person in the aircraft when it does eventually take off after the delay

GO TO THE FLIGHTMOLE.COM FORUM
TELL US YOUR AIRLINE BROKE BREAD WITH YOU?
WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF A MEAL?