Why don't planes have a switch beside the call button that you can choose between "wake me up for meal service" or "leave me alone?"

This is a thing on (some) planes.

Took a transatlantic flight that had this functionality.. it wasnt in the call button, but on the infotainment system. Instead of playing movies, you could set the screen to display one of those 2 options.

I've seen that too. I think it was with SAS. On other overnight flights they've asked me in the beginning about my preference on the matter.

I don't remember which, but on one of my flights, we were distributed eye masks with different colors on each side. If you were wearing the red color on the outside, it meant that you wanted to be left alone. Smart and yey, free eye mask!

One time I flew with Emirates and they had a little pack on your seat that had stickers to put on the seatback in front - red that said let me sleep and green said wake me for a meal. Flew with them since and haven't seen it again but I thought it was a great idea!

I always used to fly Emirates until they stopped cleaning their planes and every journey involved a long layover in a busy and grotty Dubai airport.

Real answer? Because every little change to an airliner has to be approved by a lengthy and expensive process, and every tiny bit of weight they can avoid adding saves them money. American Airlines saved $40,000 a year by removing one olive from every first class salad, they're not about to add weight back on for an extraneous little feature of dubious actual value.

Just be less poor. /s

But seriously in business class you can tell them if you want to be woken up or not and they'll remember and respect it. Or course you can also probably get something to eat even if you missed meal service.

I need a leave me alone button for daily life

That exists, it's called a face tattoo.

Air Canada has these two options

You had me until you suggested Air Canada did something positive for the cattle.

Because the airline industry is a scam that has been running on bailouts for decades while never actually bothering to innovate or improve their service while at the same time funneling all the profits to stock buybacks.

It would be better if you could just order the meal(s) from the start of the flight with an option to change them at any moment by using the screen in front of your seat.

It's such a pain in the ass to have to be alert for when the attendants show up and also trying to understand which options they have when it all could just be shown on a screen on your language.

Honestly I feel any situation in which they put a touch screen near you, and have an ordering system should be done like this. Waay off topic but my local sonic has touch screens on all of their 50 pull in spots, that can only be used to turn through ads before you hit the button to talk to the person over the shitty half working intercom system.

If your flights have meal service and you're actually able to sleep through anything, you're on much nicer flights then i am. My flights are usually snack mix and water or soda.

Long flight usually have meal service. Short ones do the snacks and soda.

Thanks to you I remember now why I will never book food or drinks.