No more Fiesta Mix on Airplanes! AKA the downsides of travelling

I have done some flying over the past month and had the pleasure of enjoying some various airline food. Now, we all know that food on airlines can be good and can be bad. But, a recent flight I was on served Cranberry snack mix. The flight was at 8AM, so they had to serve a breakfast item, so I went in thinking, alright, dried cranberries, maybe some fruit. I opened the mini bag only to find that there were at most 5(!!) cranberries, with a mix of honey flavored sesame sticks and cinnamon flavored soybeans. Remind you, it was 8 in morning. I was hunger, so I figured why not. I did not want to buy their snack/meals, which are decent, but out of principle. The cranberries were alright, but the sesame sticks were not sweet nor were the soybeans, both tasted just like they do in the fiesta mix, bland and salty.

I know the airlines are hurting, but could they at least get something a little better? This food is cheap, I did a search to buy the Fiesta Mix online and it is $6.95 a pound, which if divided up probably provides enough snacks for about 30 people, so they probably need to buy 5 bags per flight, so basically an airline may spend under $50 for food for an airplane of people who paid a couple of hundred dollars each for their seat.

It was bad enough when they took peanuts away, they at least had flavor and some nutritional content, but what they have replaced it with is literally non-food. Pretzels are a step up from the fiesta mix (Who would serve this at their party?, No one!), but still a step down from peanuts. And this breakfast snack was only a breakfast snack because they put 5 cranberries in it. They could have easily just gone out and bought those mini boxes of raisins, might have to spend $20 more per flight, but I am sure people would be happier with what they got.

I hate to have to complain about such a minor and insignificant item, especially when there are many people who may not have the opportunity to fly and would be grateful to have just that opportunity, but the overall experience of flying has really gone downhill. And it has gone down hill fast, I remember when I was a kid, 10 or 15 years ago, how food was good, flying was an enjoyable, you didn't get treated like a criminal at security, and overall the experience was something to look forward to. But now, it is terrible.

On another note, one of the most entertaining parts of traveling has been security. In 2002, my mom, grandfather and I took a trip from Atlanta to California. Well, the way we ending up buying tickets, we had one way tickets at a certain point. (We went Atlanta to San Francisco, then San Fran to Seattle, Seattle to Atlanta, so the one way was San Fran to Seattle). So, we of course got the serious and expert inspection at the airport. We, being good citizens, agreed and let the TSA people to do their job. Now, my mom and I had no problem with the inspection, search the bags, take off shoes (this is pre-shoe bomber incident). But they made my 89 year old grandfather take off his shoes, which was a lot of extra work for him, since the couldn't provide him a shoehorn. But it brings up the point that comes up time and time again, why do this to someone who is clearly not a threat? Look, he was 89 years old, we used a wheel chair to get him onto the plane, really is this your threat. And now more recently, my mom had her bag searched as we went through the airport at Los Angeles (LAX, which by the way, is quite possibly the worst designed airport, and what is worse it that the city has the second largest metro population in the country, so it is not some small airport where it wouldn't matter). So my mom's bag was searched and the item of interest, was a piece of fish that we got as a gift (Copper River gift set, the fish is freeze dried or something). I had to just start laughing at the situation, because simply, this was the threat? A piece of fish.

So, back to my original point, the overall experience of flying has significantly gone down and the food, as I see represents this. Something that was once good has become awful and little steps could be made to remedy this.