Dani:
The purpose of not eating the same is avoiding food poisoning. The purpose of not eating at the same time is avoiding distraction from flying, and most of all talking to ATC. It's amazing that some professional pilots here seem to follow rules but not knowing why...
Nonsence Dani!!! YOU obviously don't know why... The reason for not eating at the same time is because the symptoms food poisening can show very severely and very
quickly. (within 20 mins as Rollingthunder said correctly) Just read the relevant chapter in ANY JAR OPS OM! The reason for not eating at the same time is both to avoid a simultaneous double incapacitation and also to have someone at the controls in case of an RA, engine failure etc...
Speaking of professionalism and crewfood: EZY caterers frequently load the same crewfood leaving the crew very little (or no) choice of what to eat.
Furthermore with the EZY rosters, schedules and workload, planning to have a crewmeal, whilst respecting the limitations of not eating at the same time, can be very very difficult.
To be honest, I sometimes 'bust' the above rule when flying, simply because I weigh the risks of operating on reduced capacity (i.e. without any food in my stomach) versus the very slight risk of foodpoisoning.
p.s. it's always good to have some of those charcoal tablets against diarrhea in your crewbag!
