Helsinki - Budapest (Hungary)
MALEV
This is one of those odd cases that makes you wonder the whole meal reservation system. Due to several reasons, I couldn't make my flight reservation myself. It was made by a Belgian organization who was reimbursing my travel and used their Egencia system (pretty handy) to reserve a flight for me. Of course they forgot to write to the message to agent field "please reserve me VLML meal". That's okay, as the Malev airlines has an excellent email service, where you can send your request. They even have a checkbox for the urgent requests.
Since my flight was taking off in less than 2 days, I was in a great hurry. I sent them an email and asked if they could reserve me a VLML meal, and I got the response the next day (one day before my flight). Usually the agents don't even bother trying, but the Malev agent had tried to reserve me my vegetarian meal, but It was not accepted by the space control (say what?). The flight back home supposed to be okay.
Dear XXXX,
Thanks for your email. I requested the vegetarian meal but for the flight from Helsinki to Budapest the space control didn't accept the request but for Budapest Helsinki the vegetarian meal has been confirmed. Thanks for the understanding and have a nice day.
Regards
XXXX
Malev Contact Center
As usual, I have to ask 2 to 4 people to get my vegetarian meal for the flight.
- I send an email right after I receive my e-ticket to the hosting organization and ask if they remembered to reserve a VLML meal while booking the ticket. I get "no" usually.
- I send email to the MALEV and ask if I can get vegetarian food, "no"
- I ask in the check-in if it is possible, "no", "..but usually these kind of flights have just sandwich, probably cheese" is the answer.
- I step in the airplane and ask the steward if they have any vegetarian options but they are too busy while greeting the flyers. But I get some kind of message that they might return to it.
- They come to my seat and tell they only have cheese sandwiches. That's ok for me. Although it turned out that the cheese had one substance that is made from freshly born calves I ate it anyways.
Budapest - Helsinki
MALEV
The flight back was unexpectedly interesting. There was a snowstorm in Helsinki and the airplanes couldn't land at all for some time. And well, my plane took off on time unlike the next airplane that was more than an hour late already before the check-in. Luckily the snowstorm had settled enough before my plane landed, so I didn't have to travel hundreds of kilometers by the bus by the night from another distant city.
Like you can see in the email I copy-pasted, I was expecting to have a vegetarian meal. I came to the check-in well on time, and the man behind the counter starts making phone calls in Hungarian regarding my flight. Yikes! I'm a bit confused. They ask me if I'm flying the Finnair or the Malev (due to code sharing), and apparently they have lost all my records..? The traveling has made me suspicious, but because the counter keeper was in a hurry I forgot to ask about the vegetarian option (that should have been okay). I come to the boarding counter and ask about my meal, and they point at the boarding ticket and say it should read there if I had any options reserved. Duh! In less than 5 days perioid, my confirmed meal has disappeared from the system. Luckily, thanks to the good luck, they served Italian cheese ciapattas on this flight. Although there was no tag of what it would contain, I ate it anyways as I was really hungry.
Conclusion: Both of my vegetarian food reservations failed, but I received a cheese sandwich on both flights never the less. Thanks Malev for serving cheese sandwiches on flights!
