The United States is beginning the journey back to its pre-COVID ways, for better or worse. And thereโ€™s no greater indication of this than that you can once again drink really bad coffee on airplanes.

As reported by One Mile at a Time, an airline and travel blog, Southwest Airlines has announced a continuation of in-flight services that had been limited due to the pandemic, which includes coffee or the coffee-like hot brown youโ€™d expect to find in a giant metal tube hurdling through the sky at 500+mph (which is actually pretty impressive when you put it that way). The Dallas-based airline will resume complimentary coffee โ€œon all flights of 251+ milesโ€ starting on June 24th. In a press release about the update, Southwest stated:

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Bringing back this level of beverage service allows Southwest to provide an enhanced on-board experience for customers traveling with us this summer, and the additional service restores more elements of Southwest hospitality that customers know and love.

The announced return of in-flight coffee by Southwest falls in line with other major carriers. Per One Mile at a Time, Alaska, American, Delta, and United have all made similar announcements recently.

I have to admit, even as skeptical as I am about us too-eagerly returning to The Old Ways, the re-emergence of airplane coffee is a welcome update. Is the coffee objectively bad? Yes. But a hot cup of weak, burnt coffee paired with a complimentary Biscoff cookie pack is a creature comfort that helps get me through an hours-long flight. Should I have to endure the stress of entering such close quarters with a few hundred complete strangersโ€”not even 40% of whom are likely to be fully vaccinatedโ€”Iโ€™m going to need my bland security blanket.

Maybe if they bumped the cabin pressure up to nine bars we could get a higher extraction rate.

Zac Cadwaladerย is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.ย Read more Zac Cadwaladerย on Sprudge.

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