Lufthansa is expanding its buy-on-board catering programme, and for the first time the German flag carrier will offer properly hot main courses to Economy Class passengers on its short- and medium-haul European network. From 1 September 2026, five hot dishes join the airline's Onboard Delights menu on flights lasting at least two hours.
The line-up is deliberately broad. Passengers will be able to choose between beef roulade with potato dumplings, chicken teriyaki, tortellini in a tomato and courgette sauce, a DΓΆnninghaus currywurst, or a cheeseburger supplied by the German restaurant chain HANS IM GLΓCK. The beef, chicken and pasta options each come with a dessert, while the currywurst is served with a bread roll.
There is one important catch: the hot dishes are available exclusively by advance order. Passengers must pre-select their meal between four weeks and 24 hours before departure. Lufthansa says the pre-ordering requirement is what guarantees that a chosen dish is actually loaded and available on board β a sensible constraint given the limited galley space and oven capacity on a narrowbody operating a two-hour European sector.
That logistical reality is why hot food has been slow to return to short-haul Economy across Europe. Once the region's full-service carriers moved to buy-on-board models, the practical difficulty of stocking, heating and serving hot meals within a short cruise phase pushed most menus toward cold sandwiches, snacks and beverages. Pre-ordering flips the problem around: catering knows in advance exactly how many of each dish to load, which removes the waste and the guesswork.
Lufthansa is making a second change on the same date. The airline is widening the advance meal-selection service it already offers to long-haul Business Class passengers. Until now that option has been available primarily on flights departing Frankfurt and Munich; from 1 September it extends to most return flights heading back to Germany, giving passengers on the inbound leg the same ability to lock in their preferred main course before they reach the airport.
Taken together, the two moves point in the same direction. Rather than reinstating a complimentary meal service that European short-haul economics no longer support, Lufthansa is leaning harder into pre-ordering as the mechanism that makes a more ambitious onboard menu workable. It is a model that several European carriers have experimented with, and one that trades spontaneity for reliability β you cannot decide mid-flight that you would like the currywurst, but if you booked it four weeks earlier, it will be there.
For the airline's short-haul fleet, which leans heavily on the Airbus A320 family including the A320neo and A321neo, the change requires no cabin modification β only a different approach to how the galley is stocked before pushback.
Sources: Lufthansa Group, Aviation24. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By Elena Vargas.
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