What: Aer Lingus flight Dublin – Chicago – Dublin (economy class).

Prices: Not applicable.

Vegetarian menu: In economy class the choice of meals on the plane (if you had not ordered a special meal prior to the flight) was either chicken or beef.

Drinks: Free water, juice, soft drinks, tea, coffee. Alcohol was available for purchase.

Service: On the plane the crew were helpful and friendly. However, when booking the tickets on the Aer Lingus website there was no possibility to select a vegetarian meal — this had to be done by calling a 1850 number. I refuse to call these numbers so after much time I eventually located an email address and was able to order my vegetarian meal by email. Luckily it worked this time  (previously I even had confirmation that a vegetarian meal would be available for me but was told on the plane that my special order was not in their system) and I actually got my vegetarian meal. Other vegetarians on my flight were not so lucky.

Comfortable? Aer Lingus economy class is pretty cramped.

Was the food good? Not really. On the way out the vegetarian meal was pasta and tomato sauce with peas and a pasta salad. On the way back it was a very dismal affair – dry rice with green beans. The veggie breakfast snack was a very cold and doughy bagel with jam (the regular snack was a ham and cheese sandwich).

Toilets: Clean.

My advice to the chef: The veggie meals need more thought. Even on a plane I would hope for something a lot better than what I got.

My advice to the manager: Given that vegetarian meals are, on average, cheaper than meat based meals, why not serve them to everybody and make them tasty, given your evident desire to reduce costs everywhere else?

Overall: Aer Lingus should provide a free and easy way to order veggie meals (or at least scrap the 1850 number for a Dublin number) and the meals themselves could be much improved.

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Pre-ordered veggie meal Dublin-Chicago