Rick’s Rants and Raves

Today I flew on United Airlines for the second time in 3 weeks. The last time I flew, I learned that what my flight reservation system called a “light lunch” was really a “snack available for purchase.” I was so pissed at the time, I didn’t even look at the description of what I would be getting for my money (well, my company’s money).

Today, I decided to find out because I knew it would be a while before I got food, even on the ground. They have four different snack boxes to choose from aimed at four obvious demographics. I don’t recall the exact names but the demographics went something like this: person who fears heart attacks, person who wants a heart attack, earthy crunchy type, and aerobics instructor. I chose the “person who wants a heart attack”, called “Quickpick” and this is what I got:

• Beef jerky, 1 oz.
• Blue corn tortilla chips, 1.25 oz.
• La Victoria single serving salsa
• A shortbread cookie package (forget the size, but it had four cookies the size of a single side of an oreo)
• Some sort of “baked cheese snack” that tasted a lot like cheezits, but looked nothing like them. I’m guessing it was around an ounce or so.

So, in a vending machine at work that would have been $1.25 (jerky) + $0.75 (corn chips) +$0.75 (cookies) + $0.75 (cheese snack) + $0.75 (salsa, guessing) = $4.25. Not a bad deal considering the convenience of having it handed to me at 37,000 feet.

So, for future reference, the United Airlines snack boxes appear to be a pretty reasonable deal if you want more than a half dozen mini-pretzels.