American Airlines Has A Strange Definition Of “Asian”

https://viewfromthewing.com/american-airlines-has-a-strange-definition-of-asian/

by Gary Leff on October 8, 2022

As a Dallas-based airline, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that American Airlines doesn’t know what a bagel is. There’s really strong Asian food in Houston (especially Vietnamese) but not as much in the Dallas Metroplex. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the folks working on American’s food and beverage team aren’t familiar with Asian cuisine, either.

Faced with choices like turkey sandwiches for dinner, and cold items only on my Charlotte – Austin flights at breakfast, I’ve been ordering special meals. Those are usually hot meals, when everyone else is getting cold. But not always, and they vary in quality quite a bit.

For a recent Austin – Charlotte flight I ordered the Asian Vegetarian meal. Here’s how American Airlines describes the concept,

Spicy vegetarian meals with limited use of dairy products

Here’s what I was served:

They don’t promise much in terms of specifics, but there are two concepts that the meal is supposed to meet:

Asian
Spicy
This one was neither. In fact it was the exact same meal available to the rest of passengers in coach, with the addition of a fig bar. Just like on the streets of Hanoi!

We’ve all heard about supply chain issues. Indeed, much of American’s catering out of Austin this year has actually come from Houston. I can understand not being able to get your preferred items all the time – maybe you’ve got to substitute mapo tofu with a nice madras curry!

That’s not what happened. Instead I fear that the F&B team just hasn’t been to enough good 3.5 star Chinese restaurants.

COMMENTS:

Alan says:

As an Asian living in Dallas, I’d like to ask what arbitrary criteria you use to say there isn’t a strong Asian food presence here. Having lived in Philly, Boston, New York, I would venture to say the “Asian” food market is strong in DFW and nothing to sneeze at when compared to those cities. I know hyperbole is your thing and you’re saying this to fit the theme of your story, but this one seems a bit off-based. If you’re interested in the delicious Asian food in DFW, check out the Facebook group “Asian Grub in the DFDUB”.

DesertGhost says:

China is only a part of Asia. There’s a whole lot of the continent that isn’t in China. It reaches from the Middle East (including Israel, and the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas), to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, all of the so-called “Stans” (Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, etc.), Mongolia, and most of Russia (east of the Ural Mountains). It’s a big place. The food there is quite diverse.

AVML is “Asian” because they don’t want to say “Indian” or “Pakistani” or “Bangladeshi”. If you’re looking for East Asian, it’s VOML (Oriental).

Sean M. says:

AVML is probably on the way out as an IATA standard meal description soon – too many people are finding the term exclusionary, so “Asian” is likely to be dropped by 2025 and replaced with a less triggering adjective. Similarly with MOML, HNML, KSML, etc.. to become more descriptive of the ingredients and preparation rather than of the target religious/ethnic demographic.