The relatively small, separated terminals at Los Angeles International Airport generally make security wait times more manageable, but the food options can be seriously lacking. And if you forgo terminal fare for whatever’s on offer on your flight? Good luck nabbing one of the last cheese plates.
Enter Shake Shack, which recently began to partner with Delta Air Lines to offer cheeseburgers to first class fliers on select routes—including, as of earlier this week, flights over 900 miles out of LAX.
That means, yes, in order to secure an in-flight Shack Shack cheeseburger, you’ll need to splurge on a first class seat and be flying a bit east of the Rocky Mountains, about as far south as Cabo San Lucas, somewhere around Seattle to the north or out west over the Pacific Ocean. If that’s all fine with you, then you’ll be able to choose the Shake Shack cheeseburger as your entrée for either lunch or dinner and make and edit your selection up to 24 hours before your flight via the Fly Delta app. (In other words: If you’re lucky enough to score a first class upgrade at check-in, you probably won’t be able to order Shake Shack.)
This technically isn’t the first time you’ve been able to tote a Shake Shack burger onboard a Delta flight in L.A.: In 2017, Shake Shack opened a location inside Terminal 3—and it even served breakfast—though that outpost appears to have shuttered sometime around late 2020.
It’s worth noting that the New York-born burger chain calls this in-flight offering a “Shake Shack Cheeseburger” as opposed to its in-store-branded ShackBurger (which costs $7.99 at my nearest Shake Shack, no first class ticket required). Nonetheless, the Delta kitchen’s take on the burger looks pretty much identical: an Angus beef patty topped with cheese and served on a toasted potato bun, with options for lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions and ShackSauce on the side. It also comes with a bag of chips, a Caesar salad and a dark chocolate brownie (no fries or concretes here).
LAX joins Atlanta, Seattle and New York-LaGuardia as the most recent round of airports added to the Delta-Shake Shack partnership, but the first class offering actually started last fall in Boston. Time Out contributor Jacqueline Dole was able to try one in December, and she thought it was way better than she was expecting it to be. “The patty retained its crispy, caramelized crust, the cheese was perfectly melted, and the potato bun was soft without being soggy,” Dole wrote. She credited the crispness to the fact that the top bun is added after heating and that toppings are left on the side. She also offered high praise for the brownie and noted that the plane’s intense air filtering made any burgery smells virtually nonexistent.
Well, your move, In-N-Out.