Dog One Stewardes007 and skylane....
Qantas Domestic Infight Services (I have a signed memo from them) dictated that after 02 January "non trunk short" (under 2.5 hours! what a joke) sectors after 1600 did not recieve tea or coffee though had bar offered. That directive came from QF to put us inline with mainline. The directive has since been retracted.
By the way the box service takes less than half the time to complete than hot meals... The reason we found it too hard to do tea+coffee on MEL-LST is because unlike the 737/727 and even 146 the 717 has only one galley. The carts could only fit 48 meals. This meant that three carts had to go out into the cabin. 2 FAs are required to operate a full size cart. Therefore on a full flights (all of them until January!) we required three carts to be loaded with 'hots' and moved through the cabin from front to back, back to front and in the middle with only 4 FAs (higher pax-fa ratio than 6 FA on 727 and 5 on 737). It was a bit of a ballet at the best of times... Given that the poor galley op had galley stuff to do meant sometimes only one cart could go out as that only left one FA for the other. Other problems were that tea+coffee can only be brewed in the air (safety reasons) and the brewers are shocking and never work. The galley op had to brew all tea+coffee before a second cart could go into cabin. Also there is no where on some a/c (2 configs of 717) to stow bar tops that have been assembled, meaning we had to do that in the air as well!
Also we offered, unlike 146 or 737 a CHOICE OF MAIN COURSE for breakky and dinner.... Try explaining 115 times what a Bacon and Onion Egg Cake with Mushrooms and Ratatoullie is to someone and then say we also have cereal and yoghurt for breakfast too. Then explain what cereal and yoghurt it is today just to have them then say "What's and egg cake?"... Just another thing that slowed us down. How many other airlines ever offer a choice of main in economy cabins on 37 min sectors?!
We all wanted to serve tea+coffee and offer bar but it wasn't possible given the above galley config, equipment and crew issues. It becomes a safety concern when you have to leave trays on paxs laps for landing because they are still eating. I found that even on the AM flights that ALWAYS had tea or coffee this was often the case.
We have always (except due catering error or directives from QF) served tea and coffee when a COLD meal or snack is served.
I know it's a bit hard to understand but believe me when I say it just was not possible. It was around Sept/Oct last year that mainline stopped servind tea+coffee on dinner flights under one hour (including SYD-MEL SYD-BNE MEL-CBR MEL-ADL). So we were really catching up with them anway. Gone are the days of assist FAs and extra crew and putting extra stowages in to ease the service (coz you can fit in more seats if you don't!).
hmmm.... hope you are satisfied with that response. Not defending the situation though. Given another oportunity to serve a decent Y product I reckon we could manage due to pride alone.