The excuse we keep getting is that it costs 8x more to deliver a special meal blah blah blah.
Thanks for the info, stubby jumbo, it confirms rumours I heard from Q Catering friends. Why do Qantas offer the service at all then? I guess because it would be really bad
PR to say 'we don't do special meals' and might open themselves up to discrimination claims. Is the attitude; 'let's just 'lose' the requests and have it both ways?' How awful. Even Virgin offer one option on their buy as you go menu, which is all anyone asks for.
Cathay has a great concept. They do a generic, all purpose special meal. It's gluten, wheat, yeast, dairy and egg free, low fat, low salt and also very tasty. Basically it's boiled chicken with rice and green vegies. This means they don't need to carry a huge range of different meals (unlike Q Catering who carried about twelve different sorts of meal last time I looked) so if you order a special meal of any sort, that's what you get. Easy, efficient and keeps the punters happy.
Possibly it's also Halal and kosher too, which would make things even simpler again.
Instead, by the sounds of it Qantas maintain this farce of catering to all punters with no intention of actually doing so (and there are quite a few people around with food restrictions, whether for health or religious reasons) and leave their hardworking frontline staff to bear the brunt of the resulting anger. What a toxic approach.