It's the age-old question passengers must ask themselves: 'cookies or chips'?
Air New Zealand says this question is about to get a lot more complicated, as it announces new food offering on domestic services.
After extensive piloting across 100 flights and tailored to the tastes of over 7000 passengers the airline can reveal its new menu for domestic passengers.
Alongside Cookie Time biscuits and kettle chips there will be a choice of other New Zealand-produced snacks including popcorn, crisps, muesli bars and chocolate.
These will be rotated on a monthly basis.
"We heard from passionate cookie and corn chip enthusiasts, along with others who believe variety is the spice of life," says the airline's GM of Customer Leeanne Langridge regarding the trials.
The airline has added more gluten-free options, following customer feedback.
Requests for ice cream, champagne and croissants, were not on-boarded this time. However, the airline did say that there would be some surprise additions to the refreshment trolley in the monthly menu rotations.
While there are new additions, some menu options have been taken off the table. Tea, coffee and hot drinks will be axed from Koru Hour flights shorter than 50 minutes.
"Going forward, we're going to be more time specific with what's on offer," said Langridge. Instead they would be offering "danishes in the morning to antipasto in the evening – because we know a cookie at 6.00am isn't for everyone."
The pre-landing lollies are here to stay, says the airline.
The menu options and aircraft upgrades to popular routes is part of a general re-vamp of the domestic network- now the airline's bread and butter. While quarantine-free travel is paused for the next two months, the number of domestic seats on the network has eclipsed pre-Pandemic levels.
"We are continuously reviewing the amount of capacity we have domestically and have been making changes around New Zealand holiday destinations," said Air New Zealand CEO Greg Foran.
