The United States is beginning the journey back to its pre-COVID ways, for better or worse. And there’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 you’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 “on all flights of 251+ miles” starting on June 24th. In a press release about the update, Southwest stated:
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 strangers—not even 40% of whom are likely to be fully vaccinated—I’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 Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
