Young Paul:
Have you considered, in your attempt to paint this Captain as a throw back to the 1950's, that there may be other reasons for why he wanted his food given to him in "courses"? You keep talking about this Captain being "waited" on without actually knowing the reasons why. Yeah, maybe the guy is a dick or maybe he was in a bad mood, maybe your friend took this all the wrong way and was having a bad day and took a reasonable request badly. Lets play, What If....
What if the Captain, being possibly older but not too old, suffers from something like Diabetes? All reissue points aside, if this were the case then his request to have the food served to him in courses actually increases flight safety because he would be checking his blood sugar between each meal, and does not want to impress upon the Flight Attendant(s) to prepare more for him if he does not need it.
What if it was a very late departure and the Captain, in his infinite wisdom, considered the effect a large meal would have on his ciradian rhythm and therefore requested his meal to come to him in stages to avoid potential safety issues later on in the flight?
There are many real world, safety of flight issues why the Captain would have requested his meal in stages. Many more than the potential "he was a dick" reasons.
I want to add something into the mix because there seems to be an undertone in this thread that needs to be discussed in our industry:
There is still a Chain of Command on the aircraft, whether new Captains, the First Officer and/or Flight Attendants want to believe it.
The airplane is not a democracy. The First Officer and/or Flight Attendants will not be held criminally liable should something happen, but the Captain will, therefore what they say, goes.
The concept of CRM has come so far left of centre that some crewmembers seem to think that if the captain makes a call they dont agree with, then CRM allows me to challange that and if they still dont like it, then its the Captain with Poor CRM Skillsm. Quite the opposite.
CRM allows you to voice your opinion knowing that the trained crew members will take the information on board. It does not mean that you will like the response and it does not mean that you are all equal on the totem pole.
United Airlines has gone, at least IMO, the right way with their C/L/R course - Command, Leadership, Resource Management. (BTW, I dont work for United, so its an unpaid plug!) Its a couple of years old now, but its great!
They're instilling in their crew again the idea that, yeah the Captain is the boss, but as Captains: here is how to be a great Leader and here is how you as a crew work together.
Thats CRM
Rant over.
PilotsOfTheCaribbean:
My airline overcame the issue of the seatbelt sign/flight deck service by simply adding a Chime after takeoff -generally through 5,000 feet or "through the bumps" which lets the Flight Attendants know that they can get up and begin service to the passengers only. They will not contact the Flight Deck until the seatbelt sign is off which to them indicates that Sterile Cockpit has ended. Its a simple change that I know numerous carriers do, but for some reason took us forever and a year to figure out how to do it.