Food-for-sale also dropped

Associated Press

On your next Delta flight, bring your own pillow and few more bucks for drinks.

Delta Air Lines is dropping its food-for-sale program, boosting prices on alcoholic beverages and eliminating pillows on many flights, the carrier said Wednesday. The struggling airline, the dominant carrier at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, is seeking to improve customer service even as its tries to become more efficient and cut costs.

Changes in the air

• Instead of food for sale, Delta will now offer a wider assortment of name-brand snacks, including multigrain chips, honey-roasted peanuts and wheat crackers.

• Alcoholic beverages now will cost $5, up from $4.

• A prearranged snack pack of crackers, cheese, Oreo cookies and Sun-Maid raisins will be offered in coach class on flights longer than 3½ hours.

The nation`s third-largest airline said that starting April 3 it will replace its food-for-sale program, which was launched on selected flights in July 2003, with a wider assortment of free snacks in coach class on most domestic and some Latin American and Caribbean flights of more than 90 minutes.

Delta`s discount subsidiary, Song, will still offer food for sale, spokesman John Kennedy said. Neither will Song`s alcoholic beverages price rise.

In 2001, Delta, along with many of its rivals, curtailed food service to reduce costs as air travel plummeted. Two years later, Delta announced it would offer a new menu -- from Mediterranean chicken to New York cheesecake -- in hopes that customers would pay for it. The meals cost up to $10 and were initially sold on 400 flights.

The Atlanta-based airline also said Wednesday it is hiking the price of alcoholic beverages from $4 to $5 on all domestic and international flights. The Atlanta-based airline said pillows will no longer be provided on Delta flights within the 48 contiguous states, Bermuda, Canada and Central American and Caribbean destinations beginning in mid-March. Blankets will continue to be available.

Delta said in a statement that shedding pillows will provide more room for carry-on luggage in overhead bins and reduce costs, though Kennedy said cutting costs is not the main reason for the changes announced Wednesday.

``Our customers let us know that they wanted more service delivered more consistently across the board,`` Kennedy said. ``So, we eliminated the food for sale to accommodate a more convenient, more consistent snack service for more customers.``

At the same time, Kennedy added in the context of the changes, ``Suffice it to say, it`s part of our transformation program, which is looking to eliminate more than $5 billion (in costs) by the end of 2006.``

Asked whether the food-for-sale program was successful, Kennedy said, ``I do not know whether money was lost or made.`` Kennedy also declined to say how much money the airline expects to save from eliminating pillows on many flights and from better operational efficiency through reducing the time it takes to return a plane to service.

Delta said it will continue to offer free meals to first-class passengers on flights longer than 3½ hours, and to all passengers on international flights of at least five hours, as well as flights to and from Hawaii and Alaska.