An American Airlines first class passenger was the only one not to get a meal on their flight, and she’s taken to social media saying it’s because she’s Black.

The influencer believes that she was singled out for her race. This does not make sense to me. She did not pre-order her meal (which any passenger can do until 24 hours prior to their flight) and she was seated in the last row. That put her last on the list to make a meal selection.

• She wasn’t in the last row because of her race.
  
• There was a catering issue. If they ran out of meals as she says, then the flight was under-provisioned. That’s was done by the caterer, not knowing who’d be shorted a meal – so also not a race issue.
  
• Where she’s sitting, rather than what she looked like, is clearly why she wound up without a meal.

American Airlines is under fire after the only Black first-class passenger, an influencer, claimed that they conveniently ran out of all their food when it was her turn to be served, and everybody else was served. ️ ✈️

pic.twitter.com/DKBObqECZZ

— Rain Drops Media (@Raindropsmedia1) May 15, 2025

The passenger complains that she wasn’t offered anything in lieu of the meal (like ‘chips’). That’s fair – but flights under 1,300 miles don’t have food for sale in economy on American Airlines. I imagine that the flight attendant could have been more empathetic and apologetic, but there wouldn’t have been coach meals or snacks to offer.

1,300-mile flights and longer may have cheese plates for sale in back, with usually only around 4 loaded

Here question of ‘how could this happen’ that American runs out of meals, when they know how many first class seats there are, is a reasonable one! It doesn’t usually happen, but catering is done quickly, and sometimes carelessly. And it happens enough that flight attendants have gotten a memo reminding them to apologize (but not to delay the flight to fix it). A year ago Chicago and Philadelphia flights were frequently having catering issues.

I had one reader ask about the person next to her clearly eating. Assuming that the flight was literally short a meal (rather than being short what the woman making the video wanted) then it’s possible her seatmate had pre-ordered, or just ordered before her when the flight attendant came to their row for meal selection.

There may not have been enough meals (miscatered flight). It’s possible that the flight attendant working the front cabin of this 737 dropped a meal in the galley. There are any number of things that could have happened that are more plausible and more benign than ‘what she looked like’ as the reason for not getting a meal.

My American Airlines first class meal on Thursday

I don’t think I’m known for giving American Airlines a pass on issues. I’d just want more facts in evidence here before suggesting race was a factor, when the balance of probabilities likely leans in a different direction.

If the woman was seated in the first or second row and was the only one refused a meal, then we might have something to at least delve further into.