QANTAS has Menu Select, previously known as Eat on Q. Its been around for some years now, but I’m not sure how many people know that you can pre-order your main inflight meal on international flights in Economy!

Between 7 days and 48 hours prior to your flight, log into your booking and select from a choice of 3 dishes that will be served on the flight and one online exclusive dish. First, after logging into manage my booking, you will need to select your flight, the system will give you a choice of all your flights, as long as the first one departs in 7 days but you will only be able to select a meal on a flight departing within that one week period.

Displaying the meal service, in my case lunch, you have an option to select, I don’t want a meal, Ill select my meal now or Ill select my meal onboard, which the system defaults to.

The choices on my flight, QF81 from Sydney to Singapore were:
✈ Thai beef salad with vermicelli noodles and chilli lime dressing.
✈ Tandoori vegetable biriyani with basmati rice, fried onion and naan.
✈ Peri peri chicken with roast potato wedges, zucchini and mint.
Or there was the online exclusive:
✈ Barramundi with lemon dill sauce and roast winter vegetables.

As you can tell from above, I chose the Barramundi. So what did the meal look and taste like?

While not looking the most appealing with that perfectly square cut piece of Barra, it was certainly tasty. Everything was cooked to perfection and the lemon dill creamy sauce was divine. Pretty good for an economy class meal. The dish came with a buttered bread roll and some cheese and crackers, I would have liked an old school side salad, but QANTAS seems to have done away with that in economy instead opting for a slightly larger main meal.

So what are the benefits for the passenger and the airline with providing the Eat on Q service? For me, the passenger, I had a larger selection to choose from, I knew what I was going to be served and wouldn’t miss out on my choice of meal not to mention I had meal-envy from my seat neighbour. For the airline, less complaints that passengers don’t get their first choice and less food wastage if they know what people are going to order in advance. Less food wastage, thats got to be a good thing right?

So what would you have chosen from Menu Select on this flight?

FreakyFlier paid for his own ticket on QANTAS Airways.