No more free lunch: Alaska Airlines will charge $5 for meals on Mexico flights

SEATTLE — Alaska Airlines will soon quit offering free snack sandwiches on certain long-distance flights and instead sell $5 meals in the main cabin, the company said Thursday.

The move, which the Seattle-based airline said could save it several million dollars a year, will expand a meal-for-purchase program introduced in 2005 on most flights to and from Mexico.

Once the service is added to 17 daily transcontinental mealtime flights beginning Oct. 29, meals for purchase will be available on more than 90 flights daily, nearly all of them longer than three hours, the airline said.

Breakfasts will include scrambled eggs, sausage and hash browns. Lunch and dinner choices will be a chicken fajita salad wrap and Almond Roca candy or a cheeseburger and potato chips.

This is the second time Alaska Airlines has expanded its meals-for-purchase program. In August, it added the service to mealtime flights from the Lower 48 states to Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska, and from Seattle to Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth.

On Oct. 29, Alaska Airlines also will introduce a so-called "picnic pack" with various snack-sized items, including lemon pepper tuna, crackers, granola, applesauce, pita chips, Almond Roca and a drink mix. It will initially be offered on transcontinental routes and flights between Chicago and Anchorage.