Photo: Patrick van Katwijk/Getty Images
Every day a new indignity emerges. On Tuesday, Delta announced that it would no longer be serving snacks and beverages on flights under 350 miles. The new rule goes into effect May 19, so if you’d like to enjoy one of the few pleasures left in air travel — dunking a Biscoff cookie into a bitter cup of coffee on an early-morning flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles — you have a week and half left to do so.
A spokesperson for Delta told the New York Times that this change will affect about 9 percent of the airline’s daily flights. The goal, apparently, is to “create a more consistent experience across our network,” the spokesperson told the paper, insisting that even on the snackless flights, the crew will still be “visible, available and focused on caring for our customers, like they do on every flight.” Uh-huh.
This is not exactly going over well with customers. On Threads, a haven for people who love to shout into the void, many outraged plane snackers are decrying Delta’s decision. One user wrote that it was “embarassing” and that the airline was “nickel-and-diming the exact passengers who built this airline.” Another blamed Donald Trump for the decision.
In an attempt to make everyone feel better about this injustice, Delta is also adding full snack and beverage service to the Delta Comfort and Delta Main cabins for flights over 350 miles. Technically this means that, in the end, more flights will have more service.
But that’s not really the point, is it? Having to get on a short flight already sucks. You’re either connecting (two flights, awful) or you have to go through the rigamarole of getting to the airport, going through security, and having a child kick at your back just so the plane can barely hit cruising altitude before you’ve landed in Albany. One of the only joys you have to look forward to is a small bag of seasoned pretzels.
As if we haven’t endured enough, we’re almost definitely about to see a bunch of smarmy social campaigns from rival airlines. I expect in the next week or so we’ll get an AI-generated commercial from United that goes something like “United: We still have ginger ale.”
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