Here's The Airline To Fly For Cheap Drinks And Snacks

Back in the early days of commercial air travel, United Airlines introduced a new slogan: "Fly the friendly skies." These days, the skies have gotten a lot less friendly for hungry and thirsty travelers. While the quality of airline food was once fodder for comedians, free meals for non-premium ticket holders have become as rare as ice cream trucks in the Sahara. Hawaiian Airlines is the only domestic carrier that still offers these, but the issue with this airline is that you have to be flying into or out of Hawaii. If you're looking at flying around the lower 48, Southwest Airlines has the cheapest dining options as of early 2025. It provides free snacks and nonalcoholic beverages, while you can buy a beer for $7, wine for $8, and booze or canned cocktails for $9.

Southwest's supremacy only extends to alcohol prices, as American, United, Delta, and JetBlue also offer free snacks and nonalcoholic beverages. American Airlines sells beer for $8 and wine and spirits for $10, while United's beers are $8-9, booze is $10, and wines are $10-12. Delta prices its beers at $9-11, spirits at $11, and wines at $12. JetBlue, in turn, charges $9-10 for beers, $10 for booze, and $11 for wine. A two-dollar difference shouldn't be much of a factor if you're only planning to indulge in a single drink, but most airlines have yet to set limits on in-flight alcohol purchases so flying Southwest could save you quite a bit if you're traveling in a party of big boozers.

Chances are, you'll be choosing your flight based on price, availability, and whether or not you'll need to be at the airport at 3 a.m. In case the free snack options are a deal-breaker, though, we're here to break them down for you. Southwest may have the cheapest drinks, but this budget airline doesn't let you select a snack — you get graham crackers if you fly in the morning or onion-flavored pretzels on afternoon flights. If your flight's over 1550 miles, a packet of two Oreos is on offer. At American Airlines, you can select pretzels or Biscoff cookies. Both of these snacks used to be available on United as well, but in 2023 the carrier switched to a new lineup of chocolate-quinoa clusters, apple-mango fruit bars, and mini bags of pub mix, a favorite Midwestern snack (United's headquartered in Chicago).

Despite Delta having slightly higher drink prices than Southwest, it may be a better option if you're sticking to non-alcoholic beverages, as its snack selection offers the best of both worlds with Biscoff cookies (aka the cookie of the skies) as well as chocolate oat bars, pub mix, and Garden Salsa SunChips. JetBlue is another good candidate, offering a similarly extensive choice of plantain chips, graham crackers, everything bagel pretzels, and sea salt Popchips. None of these snacks makes for much of a mile-high dining experience, but travelers have been complaining about shrinking airline snack sizes for decades, so we're lucky they can still be seen with the naked eye.