The ol' company budget.  Every company (the dot-coms exempted, of course) always has a comprehensive operating budget and financial plan they review each year.  United Airlines recently sat down and reviewed how they as a company can achieve the maximum amount of savings with the least amount of "disruption to customer service and employee work life."

Onboard Service at WHQ recently posted these upcoming cutbacks  on SkyNet in a report called '2001 Product Adjustments'.  There are many food/beverage/provision changes (read: eliminations) that will occur between February 1 and April 1, 2001.  These various changes are planned to take effect at different times during the first part of the year, so as to not impact the passengers all at once.

I imagine you'll soon be reading about these 'Product Adjustments' (read: Budget Cuts) in a company printed newsletter coming to a domicile near you.  In the meantime, I've posted the significant changes right here for your review:

NORTH AMERICA MEAL SERVICE CHANGES

• McDonald's Friendly Skies Meals no longer offered.  United will board the standard children's meal currently used at non-McDonald's locations.  Apparently, the company is working on a special United-designed children's meal and packaging that they "hope to introduce later this year."
• Removing Mrs. Fields cookies in UF on pre-arrival service flights.  This is the second service warm cookie.  However, the cookies will still be boarded when it's the primary dessert on short haul flights.
• Removing grapefruit juice, olives, and lemon peels from the beverage units.
• Removing Godiva chocolates from all flights.
• Changing ratios and choices from beef to pasta on lunch and dinner flights in Economy.  This reduces the amount of the beef and chicken entrées and increases pasta.
• Removing refresher towels in all cabins on North America flights less than 3.5 hours long.
• Removed United First tray table linens on flights less than 3.5 hours.  Passenger meal trays will now be placed directly on seat tray tables for service levels 5, 7 and 9.   United will continue to board table linen for Transcon and Midcon flights.  Also, four linen napkins are bulk boarded for us to use as breadbasket liners.

INTERNATIONAL MEAL SERVICE CHANGES

• Reducing refresher towels by one in most cabins.  In South America and Atlantic markets, that's a reduction to three towels in UF and to two in UB, but remains at two for UE.  The towel service on Pacific flights reduces to three in UF, two in UB and two in UE.  The Latin America two-class flights will offer one towel in UF and one in UE.
• Removing Godiva and all chocolates from United First and United Business in all international markets.
• Replacing Dalwinnie/Glenmorangie with Johnnie Walker Black in United First and United Business.
• Removing the welcome page from international menus for UF and UB.
• Eliminating cheese and cracker from tray setup in Economy.
• Removing United Economy menus in all Atlantic markets.
• Removing the soup course from trans-Pacific, Narita-Singapore and Narita-Bangkok flights.
• Changing Mexico City to San Jose, Costa Rica, from full lunch and dinner service to a snack.
• Removing United Economy menus in all Latin America markets.

VIDEO CHANGES

• Boarding videos will no longer be provisioned and United will be returning to standard boarding music on the A319, A320, B757 , and B777XA (two-class North America configuration) aircraft.  The exception will be on the B767MD fleet (two-class configuration) because the boarding videos are needed to warm up the projector during passenger boarding.
• United will go back to twice a month short subject programming for North America flights.
• The second movie will be eliminated on westbound Transcon flights.

PROVISIONING

• Headsets will be provisioned by market rather than aircraft type. So, we will find headsets either bulk provisioned for distribution or already placed in seatbacks.  We'll only be required to collect headsets on international flights landing outside North America.  For example we would collect headsets prior to landing on ORD-CDG, but not on CDG-ORD.
• The children's wings, playing cards, coat tags, portfolio paper and children's activity kits will be eliminated.
• Intra-Asia amenity kits will be eliminated.

There are other changes as well, but these are the major ones we'll notice as line flight attendants---unless you only fly Shuttle!

Oh, I almost forgot...what would be a Jumpseatnews.com article without the mention of their interesting communication methods!  Take a look at this: In part of United's "2001 Product Adjustments" report, there is a sub-section titled 'Flight Attendant Talking Points'.

This sub-section consists of a little pre-arranged script written by Onboard Service at WHQ to provide (I suppose) to briefing supervisors "talking points with flight attendants for them to say."  I've taken the liberty of printing their exact text for you below, formatted inside an easy-to-wear-around-your-neck reference card:

Got that?  Just cut along the lines and wear around your neck for instant use!  Special cut-out design courtesy of cocky right here at Jumpseatnews.com!  Now don't you feel educated?