After booking a long haul flight with Air France I used my booking code on the ‘Manage your reservation’ section of their website to try to select vegetarian VLML meals for my flights. Their website allowed me to select a vegetarian meal for one of the flights, but not the other.
I therefore called up their customer services centre, and after managing to navigate my way through their menu system got to speak to a real person.
I asked for a VLML vegetarian mean for all my flights, and after she asked if I wanted a VGML meal, we managed to get the right VLML one booked.
The VLML code if you aren’t familiar with the airline meal codes stands for vegetarian lacto-ovo meal. It is vegetarian (no meat, no fish), and dairy products are allowed.
VLML meal 1 – Dinner
When it was time for dinner the flight attendant brought my VLML meal straight to my seat. I didn’t need to ask – and I got my meal before everyone else (I think they do this with the special meals to make sure they go to the right person).
The main item was (I think) two rolled omelettes with tomato sauce. It was very tasty. There was also a salad with camembert cheese, an orange, apple compote, a stick of bread, and a chocolate cake. The omelette was the highlight, followed by the chocolate cake.
VLML meal 2 – Breakfast
When it was time for breakfast I again got the correct VLML meal brought straight to my seat (if you order a special meal you are probably best off sticking to your allocated seat rather than changing at the last minute). And again I got my meal before the other passengers in this section.
For breakfast they had given me an ordinary piece of bread, a croissant, some canned fruit, and a caramel Alpro Soya. The bread wasn’t very exciting – and the Alpro Soya was the highlight of the Air France breakfast.
General
In terms of getting the VLML meal orders correct Air France did a perfect job. You can’t get much better than having the right meal brought to your seat.
In terms of content, they could do a bit better. The portions were quite small and the breakfast lacked imagination – two types of bread (although as this is a French airline multiple types of bread is to be expected!). If they doubled the amount of omelette for dinner, and gave something like corn flakes as an option for breakfast, it would be a better VLML experience.