Steely,
What a valauble contrubution! And what a brilliant way to improve cooperation between pilots and fa's! You must be
such a pleasure to work with.
WCF, Very recognizable description of the daily reality on short haul. Only in our mob, the same goes for the pilots; seldom if ever do they have the chance to eat their meal in peace.
In the best case scenario we eat on a stopover with catering running around, the wind howling through the ac with both a door at the front and at the rear being open, cleaners evrywhere and a ground functionary understandably anxious to board ASAP.
And to be quite honest, there does not seem to be an easy solution to this situation. To make time for meals we would have to plan in large chunks of "off time", which would cost the airline way too much money. And even then, what with all the delays, it still would be unrealistic to expect it to work.
In our airline we try an solve the situation by giving the Purser a fair amount of discretion to adapt the service schedule in such a way as to give the fa's the chance to eat an undisturbed meal at something close to "stomach-time". And if that means scrapping the tax-free sales or a round of drinks, so be it.
Purser and Captain can also jointly decide to delay boarding at an out-station by a reasonable amount of time to allow eating dinner, and a subsequent shortish delay or lack of delay-recovery is accepted.
Travelling on a charter flight with another company last year to the States, 3 hours into the flight the Purser announced: "Ladies and Gentleman, the crew will now come around with a drink service. After that we will take half an hour to eat our own dinner, and no service will be given"
I thought that was brilliant and I did not hear a single pap complain.
Hope this helps.......