Not Enough Chicken Meals on Etihad Again!

Hmmm...that's weird. This is my second flight on Etihad, and it's the second time that I wasn't able to get the meal that I wanted. The first time, I thought it was simply because I was one of the last people to get served, and so naturally they might run out of a certain selection. But today I was closer to the front of the economy class cabin, and I could already hear the flight attendant telling passengers that all she had was fish. Surely they couldn't have run out of the chicken biryani that quickly, could they?

She told me that they stocked the meal choices depending on the route, like doing largely vegetarian meals on runs to India, for instance. That makes perfect sense, but in my case, I can't help but wonder if the caterer overskewed way too heavily toward the Chinese meal on this flight to Singapore. I heard so many people around me refusing the fish tonight - and I nearly did too, except that I needed food (there wasn't much to eat at Abu Dhabi Terminal 3 either...the shawarma guy wasn't open yet).

I hope that next time I fly these guys, they stock a lot more of the Middle Eastern meal (the chicken tagine on the way in sounded interesting, but I never got the chance to try it). After all, why do they even bother distributing those menu cards when one hardly gets the chance to choose anyway? What a letdown to what otherwise is still a fantastic airline (during the boarding process, they play a bunch of promotional ads about Abu Dhabi and Etihad's partner airlines that I actually *wanted* to watch!).