Vegetarians won’t get free upgrades: Ex-Qantas Flight Attendant

We’re throwing our skinny vegetarian arms up in the air, outraged our choice to save poor little animals from the grinder have potentially cost us a swag at a free upgrade!

Surely a free airline upgrade, which are hard to come by at any instance, isn’t affected by meal choices?

Well according to Nik Loukas, a former Qantas flight attendant and author of the plane food blog InflightFeed, any special meal requests will cull your chance at scoring a free upgrade to Business or First Class, per a report on SMH’s Traveller.

“If there’s a special meal request in your booking, the airline won’t even look at you (for an upgrade),” he told Business Insider, as Traveller reports. “Because you’ve got a dietary requirement, and they might not be able to cater for you if they upgrade you.”

Apparently Qantas flat out denies the claim, with a spokesman saying “This is untrue and the type of meal our customers order has no bearing on their ability to be upgraded. If the upgrade is awarded, the special meal request will be provided in their new cabin.”

Traveller reports that to UK’s Telegraph, they too went out and tried to find if the story was true, asking five airlines, but only Virgin Atlantic responded saying “This isn’t true – dietary requirements have no impact on upgrades,” a spokeswoman told the paper. “If a customer orders a special dietary meal we can serve it in any different cabin.”

The only surefire way to score yourself an upgrade is of course, paying for one, but for the cheeky lot (us included) apparently travelling alone, being a loyal frequent flyer and being nice – as we reported this week following a new campaign by Monarch airlines – will all help you on your path to turn left toward extra legroom and better wine.