Missing Vegan Meal on China Eastern Airlines

I have just got back to London after a very long journey with China Eastern and I need to talk about it, partly as a vent and partly as a heads up for other vegan travellers.

The route was Brisbane to Shanghai, a flight of around nine and a half hours, followed by a six hour layover in Shanghai Pudong airport, and then a further fourteen hour flight from Shanghai to London Gatwick. All in all, a properly long haul journey that was tiring and rather gruelling.

Here is a photo of the food I was given in the cabin.

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I booked the flight through Booking.com a few months ago and, as part of the booking process, I was asked to specify my meal and seating preferences. My booking confirmation clearly showed that I had assigned seats and a confirmed vegan meal for both legs of the journey. So far, so good.

Boarding in Brisbane went smoothly and we were shown to our booked seats. Everything felt like it was going to plan. But quite early into the flight I noticed cabin crew going around asking certain passengers to confirm their special meal requests. That is never a particularly reassuring sight when you are a vegan and they skip over you.

I grabbed the attention of the crew and after checking their list they told me there was no record of a special meal for me. This does happen sometimes, so I decided to just get through the flight and assume I would sort food out in Shanghai.

After nine and a half hours in the air, we landed at Pudong International Airport. I quickly realised that finding anything vegan there was going to be impossible. Everything I could see was meat based. Every single option.

After a bit of searching I managed to find a small packet of almonds and cashews in a shop and washed them down with an orange juice. Not exactly what you want after a long haul flight, but it kept me going. The layover was six hours, and despite trying to find someone from China Eastern to speak to, there was nobody available to help.

Then came the second flight.

As soon as I boarded, I realised that the seats I had selected months earlier had also been changed. Instead of two seats together at the side of the plane, my husband and I were placed in the middle section of a row of four. When I showed the crew my original seat allocation, I was told there was nothing they could do as the flight was full and the seats had already been reassigned.

I know that sounds like a meaningless moan but I go out of my way to select those side seats because we are bigger guys and it takes the stress off us and fellow passengers, plus I’m a man of a certain age and I need to go to the toilet a lot during long haul flights.

Then I asked again about the vegan meal and once again I was told there was nothing on the system for me. I showed my booking confirmation which clearly stated a confirmed vegan meal and the crew simply shrugged.

During the flight I saw multiple special meals being delivered to other passengers. But for me there was nothing. No meal on a fourteen hour flight.

So that is a nine and a half hour flight, a six hour layover, and then a fourteen hour flight with almost no food. Over twenty eight hours in total with only a handful of snacks and that is before you add the three hours I arrived at Brisbane airport prior to my first flight.

Of course I am not suggesting this is the worst thing that can happen in the world and I am fully aware there are far bigger problems out there. But I do want to share this as a reminder to other vegan travellers that things do go wrong and it is worth being prepared.

As I have mentioned before, we really do need to travel with snacks on long haul flights because even confirmed meals can be missed.

I have already contacted Booking.com about this and was told that even though meal requests and seat allocations were shown in my booking, they are not guaranteed and are ultimately at the discretion of the airline. That is something I find quite frustrating, especially when it is presented so clearly at the point of booking that my meal and seats were confirmed.

It does feel like another example of how little control consumers actually have when things go wrong. We can pay for services, see them confirmed in writing, and still not receive them, with no opportunity for recourse.

I am back in London now and I survived the journey, but I am definitely still annoyed about how it all played out.

I am also left wondering if I should have contacted China Eastern directly before flying instead of relying on Booking.com to pass on the requests, even though they confirmed everything in my booking.

If anyone else has experienced something similar with long haul flights, I would be interested to hear how you handled it, because right now it feels like the safest option is just to assume nothing is guaranteed and pack snacks for survival each and every time.

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