Delta Air Lines is changing onboard snack and beverage service on short flights.
Delta Air Lines will make minor adjustments to food and beverage service in the main cabin on May 19, removing beverage and snack service on flights under 350 miles.
There’s a lot to unpack here, especially given the unorthodox manner in which the news had gotten out. The first post about Delta’s changes came across on X (formerly Twitter) on April 30, not from Delta itself, but from another user, likely working off an internal communication.
Currently, Delta offers drinks and snacks on flights over 250 miles. On flights shorter than 500 miles, the airline offers an “express beverage service” with coffee, tea, and water available in all cabins, and limited alcohol service in Delta Comfort and Delta First. Flights longer than 500 miles have the standard beverage and snack service.
Delta is raising the minimum mileage for drink and snack service from 250 miles to 350 miles, meaning some flights that previously had express beverage service will now have no service, and some other flights will get full beverage service instead of express beverage service.
The internet internetted pretty hard in response, with some posters claiming that Delta was making the changes in response to the Spirit Airlines shutdown (although the first word of the changes came across several days before Spirit shut down), that Delta was getting rid of peanuts (they stopped including peanuts as an onboard snack option nearly ten years ago) or that they were getting rid of Biscoff cookies (which are still in the rotating line-up of snacks for flights with snack service).
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The move, in fact, brings Delta more closely in-line with its competitors. American, Southwest, and JetBlue begin service at 250 miles; United starts at 300 miles; on May 19 Delta will join Alaska Airlines in offering service on flights over 350 miles. An exception is Hawai‘i interisland flights, where both Southwest and Hawaiian Airlines each offer a beverage service specially-designed for the ultra-short flights (Honolulu-Kahului is exactly 100 miles).
The move affects a relatively small percentage of Delta’s daily departures, but some of the routes are among the airline’s most heavily traveled, including between Los Angeles and San Francisco, a 337-mile route where most of Delta’s competitors will continue serving snacks and drinks.
It’s Also A Safety Issue
Delta representatives told various outlets, including the New York Times that the move was for “consistency”, but what many flight attendants already know is that it’s getting harder to serve a full cabin on shorter flights—and do it safely in increasingly turbulent skies.
Cabin crews can generally only serve beverages above set altitudes for their safety, and the shortest segments spend only a few minutes at level flight, giving flight attendants little time to provide even limited beverage services before it’s time to secure carts and serving equipment for landing. Airlines used to be much more cavalier about directing flight attendants to provide inflight service, but years of expensive workplace injuries and pressure from flight attendant unions have driven change.
In late 2023, both United and Southwest quietly started asking their crews to start picking up beverage service and preparing the cabin for arrival at an altitude of 18,000 feet, up from the previous directive to pick up at 10,000, following clarification from the FAA that flight attendants should be seated for their safety below 10,000 feet. Ending service earlier has an outsized impact on the shortest flights, meaning airlines often can’t offer beverage service on short flights the way they once did. At the time the policy was implemented, Southwest anticipated a 20% drop in turbulence-related injuries to cabin crew.
Alaska Airlines also informs passengers that service might be modified on flights where turbulence is consistently expected: “Flights to and from Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado offer an amended food and beverage selection with fewer and/or no in-flight services due to the high probability of turbulence.”
On that next Delta flight, be sure to check the mileage before boarding—it might be worthwhile to pick up a drink and a snack in the airport prior to boarding.
