I flew to Lisbon Monday evening, July 16th, on the Portuguese national airline, TAP Portugal, which also happens to be a United Airlines partner and Star Alliance member. The flight was fairly normal; it’s always amazing to me how equalizing the air travel experience is regardless of which country or carrier. Boarding passes contain the same information, the safety demonstration is basically the same, there’s an in-flight magazine, etc. The TAP magazine, incidentally, had split pages with articles in English and in Portuguese which was really neat. Some of the translations were slightly off but no complaints.

What set this flight apart, and called attention to the deficiencies of US airline practices, is that all passengers were served a hot meal with all beverages complimentary on a two hour flight. The meal was actually pretty good, certainly not the quality I would expect at a nice restaurant for dinner but still much better than some meals I’ve had in my life. On a two hour flight in the US passengers are lucky if they get a small snack bag of pretzels. United doesn’t even sell its snack boxes to economy class passengers on flights less than 3 hours. I’m not surprised that the TAP flight experience was superior in this regard, because several years ago on a one hour flight from Bangkok, Thailand to Phnom Penh, Cambodia there was a full meal service for all the passengers on the entire plane, complete with wine, dessert, and coffee.

I should also add that this plane ticket was anything but outrageously expensive. Total price including taxes and factoring in the exchange rate was about $100. My only uneducated guess as to how TAP, Thai Airways, and other international carriers are able to offer this level of service while their American counterparts (including their supposedly interchangeable Alliance partners, not just the discount competitors) keep cutting amenities is that labor costs much be much lower. Airplanes, airplane parts, jet fuel, etc. are all commodities sold on an international market and I would assume that TAP doesn’t pay less for its Airbus A320 than United pays for its. Airport operation costs probably vary as well, but labor costs in my mind would trump these.

I do not know if this hypothesis is correct, and I certainly do not know enough about the airline industry to even venture possible solutions. Certainly American airline employees’ unions are too powerful to ever accept massive wage concessions (the unions representing United employees were reluctant to give concessions even after 9-11 when the entire company was teetering on the brink of liquidation). Airline management does not seem any more flexible, after all, these were the people who thought up taking away complimentary meals and selling snack boxes to save money in the first place.

Still, I wonder if more Americans flew short haul flights between two international destinations if there wouldn’t be more popular clamoring for better service. At the very least, more people would be asking the question of US carriers instead of assuming that low cost, short distance flights mean poor to no amenities / service.