Air New Zealand trialling new Economy breakfast options

Air New Zealand is sounding out a range of new Economy breakfast options and is using the recently opened travel bubble to the Cook Islands as its testing ground.

The national carrier has posted on Twitter a poll of the four new options that are being trialled – pain au chocolat, a frittata, breakfast wrap or a muesli bowl.

The testing will take place between January 20-23 on flights to Rarotonga, and it’s available to those who have booked Works or Works Deluxe tickets.

Currently, the options onboard are a bacon and egg panini or a bagel with cream cheese and conserve.

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Air New Zealand General Manager Customer Leeanne Langridge said the airline has been busy working on new onboard offerings.

“While we’ve had less flights in the skies, we’ve been working away on our new cabin experience and there are some exciting developments in the pipeline,” said Langridge.

“Customers can expect to taste some new delights like fresh pastries, vegetarian frittatas and breakfast wraps all served in sustainable bagasse serviceware that was trialled last year. The in-flight trials are all about modernising our food offering and keeping up with the eating preferences of today.”

For the first two days of the trial, the options will be either the current standard hot breakfast, or breakfast wrap with mini pinwheel pastry, or muesli bowl with mini pinwheel pastry, while the second two days will be either the current standard hot breakfast, or vege frittata with mini pain au chocolat, or muesli bowl with mini pain au chocolat.

“The food being trialled is just a representation of a few options we want to offer, so customers can expect to see other tasty pastries onboard for example,” said Langridge.

The bubble to the Cook Islands reopened on January 14 allowing quarantine-free travel between the two nations.

Last year, the airline staged a bigger trial for its domestic food offerings.

After tests involving more than 7000 passengers across 100 flights, the airline settled on a new range of in-flight snacks – a monthly rotation of popcorn, crisps, muesli bars and chocolate in addition to the traditional cookie. The previous snack of corn chips made way for the new offerings.

Missing out after the trials were the apple crumble-flavoured Kapiti ice cream, and mandarins.

The airline recently changed the way it serves food on domestic flights in the face of the ongoing pandemic.

Those catching Air New Zealand services now have to wait until after they’ve landed to enjoy the on-board snack offerings, part of a new protection measures against Covid-19.

Passengers are provided their onboard snack when disembarking the aircraft, rather than during the flight.

The temporary change to the airline’s on-board food and beverage service came into effect on January 1.