AIRLINE FOOD - The fine art of dining at 35,000 feet

Perhaps we should begin by establishing one fact, or near-fact: the stuff served on most airlines barely qualifies as food. Now if you happen to be directly involved in the planning, preparing, delivering, or serving of airline food in any form, I apologize. Maybe you provide the 2% that is actually quite tasty and nutritious. If not, then shame on you!

There was a time before outrageous fuel prices and stiff competition when airlines took great pains to make sure that every part of your air travel experience was enjoyable, including the meal that would tide you over on that coast-to-coast or across the water flight. But time marches on. Today, if anything remotely similar to a meal is served, it is often high calorie, high fat, high sodium, and highly processed junk food. More often what you might get is a pack of pretzels or a tiny pack of cookies and a soft drink. Sometimes the soft drink consists of a plastic cup of ice with about three tablespoons of soda poured over it. You might recall very nice meals served on china with cloth napkins in first class, and in some few instances that might still be the case, but not likely. What seems to be most available in first class is alcohol. Maybe it helps one to overlook the poor fare on the tray. In business class or in the back end of the big aluminum cigar tube, you might be given the opportunity to purchase an adult beverage and some sort of sandwich or wrap. Don’t ponder too long over your choice. Just pick one. They are all a bit like cardboard with lettuce on it, though sometimes you can’t recognize the lettuce by the time it gets to your tray.

Let me digress here for a moment to defend the airlines. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. One must keep in mind that the prime directive for your air carrier is to get you and sometimes your luggage from point A to point B safely and somewhat on time. Food is…well, it’s not what you pay for when you book your flight. The airline doesn’t make money on their food service. It’s an added CODB (Cost Of Doing Business) and a pain to manage. If they sell you a sandwich, they might make fifty cents profit, but it takes a lot of sandwiches to keep an airline afloat. As for the on-time thing, they can’t always control that. No one can control the weather, and the pilot sitting on the runway in Cleveland can’t move a storm system out of the way so that he can get you to Atlanta at 8:27 am so that you can make your 9 am sales call. Don’t count on it. Poor planning on your part is not the pilot’s or the airline’s problem. Either schedule your sales call for later in the morning, or take an earlier flight. Also, keep in mind that planes are mechanical things. Mechanical things are subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Put simply, things break or deteriorate. When that happens to something on the plane I was about to board, I’m ecstatic that they found it before we took off. I’m not angry with anyone for breaking it, or making me late for my very important event. I’m happy to be late because someone was careful enough to make me late…but alive. While I’m ranting a bit here, let me remind some of you that the person in an airline uniform standing behind the counter is NOT the person who caused any of your problems. They MIGHT be able to help resolve some of your problems if you give them a chance to do so. Things like getting you on a different flight, for example. Taking out your frustration on that person is not likely to put them on your team.

Back to the food issue. I have come to the conclusion that what I will eat on a long flight is not a responsibility I want to entrust to the airline. Instead, I either make it a point to arrive at the airport early enough to pay the outrageous concession prices there and purchase something to take with me, or take time to eat a sit down meal in one of the restaurants while I wait for my flight. If I plan really well, I could even bring something from home. There was a time when, like a movie theater, airlines frowned on brown bagging. Now I think they encourage it. Don’t make it anything too elaborate. Just nutritious and easy to handle while strapped into your tiny seat. (Maybe we can talk about the tiny seat another time.) If you like pickles and tomatoes on your sandwich, put those in a separate seal-able bag so the bread will not get mushy. You can put a few good cookies or mixed nuts, or anything else you would like to snack on in bags as well. You will know exactly what to look forward to meal-wise, and you will have no one to complain to but yourself if you don’t like it.

For some wonderful pictures of actual airline meals - http://www.airlinemeals.net/indexMeals.html

I’m not saying the meals are wonderful. The pictures are wonderful. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. As you click on each link on the left side of the site, you can scroll down thru many photos of airline meals. To be fair, some actually do look very appetizing. Apparently I keep choosing the wrong carrier. But since my objective is the same as the airlines, to get from A to B safely and somewhat on time, as well as cheaply, I will gladly take care of my own meals, thank you.