Best/Worst In-Flight Catering

[Sideshow Bob]

Being a member of the Fat Eng fraternity, this is a subject close to my heart. It seams no matter where we go the standard is always different. The amount you get for your money always seams to differ also. Obviously here at Ice Station Kilo, the best we ever get is when the young Siggy goes down the Supermarket with the impress. I have seen and tasted some meals that would put a gourmet restaurant to shame cooked in that Nimrod oven. As for station rationing, you can't beat a curry and a do nut from our own in-flight. The worst has to be the stuff you get at some of the RAF bases where it has been contracted out. Last time in Gib was particularly bad. What’s your opinion where’s the best place to go to get a good in-flight meal?

[Postman Plod]

The best meal I ever had in an aircraft was in a Nimrod, when I was a cadet... Beef Wellington, mmmm. :ok:

[PPRuNe Pop]

Aeroflot by a million miles!!:yuk:

[Tilt and Gain]

Sandwiches diligently cut into “bite size” pieces. Presumably so that aircrew wearing oxygen masks can practice techniques for taking NAPS tablets whilst wearing a respirator.

Benson’s crisps. Preferably the sickly Prawn Cocktail flavour, where no single crisp is larger than a snowflake. It’s always entertaining to open the balloon-like bag at 20,000 feet.

A copious supply of tea bags and instant coffee for a trail is always entertaining. Also, though there may well be a time and place for Cup-a-Soup, the cockpit of a fast jet isn’t it.

Still, it stops one getting bored between tanker brackets.

[Zoom]

Flew Tarom once and was given 2 cold squares of something rubbery in batter. Might have been fish, might have been fowl, never found out. The beer from a trolley full of large, open bottles wasn't bad, though.

[Grimweasel]

Kilo station is the best especially on SCOTTAC when hung over. The jock pies they give you are LUSH done in the K oven. Not so good though in the J microwave. Makes a change from the usual low cost crap in the secret wilts airbase white horror boxes!

Akrotiri are nice boxes and curries too. Never can taste them over the Brandy Sour !!

[Min Decent Ht]

In the same vain as Tilt and Gain (oh, that rhymes).
Over Bos at 25K, time for a sandwich and drink to break the 4 hour monotony of circles.
Reach into butty box precariously jammed between cockpit wall and bang seat, to discover sandwiches (without crusts, nice) cut into small cubes (handy), Benson's crisps (not so much), crushed to snowflake size (leave 'em), a choccie bar (valuable commodity and equivilent to 6 beers later) and a can of coke. From feeling the can you could tell it was at about 1500psi.

Pilot: don't open the .....
nav: (bang....fizz.....drip, drip).... coke?
:* I guess we're RTB then.

There's another story of a FJ mate opening their box (!) to find a pot noodle. Useful. But it wasn't me so I aint tellin' it.
Apparently it tasted just the same without the water....

[akula]

Has to be when 15 Sandwich's are ordered from foreign civvie airfield and 15 trays of sandwich's arrive!!!! HOW HAPPY WE ALL WERE (bar captain signing for payment)..

[BEagle]

Timmy tours to the Malvinas - utterly horrible food. A boring snack when you're trying to get some sleep, then invariably Lamb Italian a bit later - and a rubber breakfast 3 hours before arrival at ASI. A scotch in th cage, then another horrid meal or two whilst watching 'Chicken Run' or 'Black Rain' for the umpteenth time if the videeoplayer batteries have lasted long enough....

The infamous S1 box - :yuk: Not bad when they had the odd sandwich and Walkers crisps - but cr@p nowadays.

Pre-penny pinching days, in-flight at Brize was excellent:ok: Beef Stroganoff was always good, as were the trays of sandwiches (killed off by some health and safety or food hygiene misery-guts). But by the time I left it was baby-puke baguettes and bloody S1 boxes due to the laziness of certain ALMs in 10 ops who weren't capable of phoning through the crew meal order on towline trips.

But the best days were when we used to fly the new crews on their States Trainers. Everyone took turns to do the catering and we dined pretty well on many an occasion - and for a fraction of the cost of using handling agents to provide the food! But no sodding chicken wings thanks - nasty hot greasy little bits of fat and gristle covered in an unpleasant hot sauce!

Best ever was lobster tails followed by filet mignon when flying back from Hawaii...........tell that to the youngsters of today and they won't believe you!

But it's back to Lufthansa business class again on Tuesday; I guess being civilian filth does have some compensations!

[RubiC Cube]

The early Nimrod days - cooked breakfast before take off, honkers stew before on task, steak on transit home.

[Ray Ginthirst]

Worst ever is out of Basrah, 10, 12 or 14hr day, you just get more sausage rolls. Have you noticed they say minimum 12% meat? Lord knows what the rest is.
I'm being unfair actually, you also get a slice of spam wedged into a stale roll.

[YellowBelly]

Without doubt, Waddo in-flight has got it cracked. Multiple choices of fast-frozen meals of incredible quality. Current menu includes 2 curry options (beef madras & chicken korma - better than some I've had from an Indian restaurant) and the steak and kidney pudding is worth losing your flying pay for. Also healthy and veggie options for the wooosies. Best still, eating arrangements on the Magic Mushroom are based on a self catering system so no need for extensive Jamie Oliver lessons during the OCU. However, airborne techs used to do a wonderful job of supplementing the normal meals during the long transits from Oman to Afghanistan (BLTs outbound, a little 'snackette' post AAR and cheeseburgers in bound). Oh, and we did some work as well.

[TheSeeFarShadow]

:D Best has got to be lobster thermadore or fillet steak during the Great War of 91 (courtesy of Oman Air catering). The USAF tanker guys over the otherside of the airfield got to hear about it, from then on we took at least four of them flying every flight and sent them home with v. large doggy box. Slightly better than their MREs (Meals Rejected by Ethiopians)

:yuk: Worst was very recently when I had the pleasure of flying to Caribbean by Herc. Three days of Ryvita, stale bread rolls, four Foxys Glacier Fruits and bottles of Panda pops, Courtesy of two ALM schlongs-you know who you are. Luckily I returned by NimAir, other half of crew not so lucky-another three days in Herc

[RRAAMJET]

Best in-flight catering was on TQF Fisher-Price Starlifters, by a mile...:p (unless it was a tour of the Soviet Union, in which case we were reduced to feeding HRH Fray-Bentos tinned pie-thingies 'cos the Ruskies nicked all our BA-supplied lobsters. Swine.:( )

Our 777 crew meals are pretty yummy, too.

Worst: meals cobbled together from supplies purchased at an Addis-Ababa market.:yuk: :uhoh: :ooh: I'm-not-changing-your-sheets-again-sir...

Finningley feeder. :yuk: period.

[Benzimra]

Best RAF in-flight I ever had was crayfish out of Masirah, 1967.

[Phoney Tony]

Best Days Food (24 Hours)


Breakfast

In flight feeder at RAF Waddington (V Bomber Days):

Steak, egg, mushrooms and chips.

Lunch

Nimair (SAR Scramble):

All the rations on the aircraft. Provided by Waddo in flight (They were good then too).

Dinner

Sgts Mess RAF Waddo:

Beef Wellinghton

Supper, After many beers

Curry in a Lincoln resturant near the bottom of Steep Hill

Breakfast again

In flight feeder at RAF Waddington (V Bomber Days):

Steak, egg, mushrooms and chips.

Not just the quantity but the quality, company and service were all fantastic.

Wonder why I am so fat!

[stbd beam]

Would like to echo all the sentiments about Nimrod meals around the world and add some of my own: Bahrain last year - Gulf Air rations (ta very much) included steak sarnies (awesome steak) and club sarnies with fried egg over easy, ham, cheese etc (both the previous dipped copiously in chilli garlic sauce for the benefit of the 2nd radar operator - you know who you are !!). Then prawn cocktail laid out in 6 trays of about a foot square jam packed with tiger prawns, lobster now and again, samosas, bhajis etc for snacks and main meal choices to die for. And for those on a diet (every other trip) there were beacoup de plates of freshly sliced fruit - melon, pineapple, kiwi, grapes etc. Can't remember how we found time to work to be honest.

..... self prepared langoustines in garlic sauce seems to ring a bell .....

SAR scramble (old style) - honkers with everything including pear slices, beef stew and evaporated cream, all in the same pot !

ISK rations not bad at all nowadays.

Finningley feeder. .:yuk: period

[Grimweasel]

Worst had to be Boil in the Bag 24hr rats. in the early 'ghan days. 7 mins in the K oven and hey hoh, blocked up arse for another two days. What joy. Mind you 'Dave's Insanity' chilli sauce (hottest in the world) enabled No.2's within two hours of eating. Happy Days!!

[adrian mole]

Best: The famous Gan Curries and the Seafood platter from the civilian in-flight at Albuquerque.

Worst: TV dinner sbought by the ALM at Offutt whilst the good stuff went into his holdall and the doggy bag with salami door stop sandwiches from Sofia.

[PlasticCabDriver]

Not strictly in-flight, but the curry knocked up by some Gurkhas in a field next to the Pegasus 4(?) HLS in Kosovo in 99, washed down with a gallon of strong tea. Outstanding.

[adrian mole]

PCD

Was that near a town called Magera? If so, been there, done that and concur...... chicken bones and all.

[PlasticCabDriver]

It was near a place called Lipjian (sp?), by a railway line, TSW were there too for a while

[Always_broken_in_wilts]

"But by the time I left it was baby-puke baguettes and bloody S1 boxes due to the laziness of certain ALMs in 10 ops who weren't capable of phoning through the crew meal order on towline trips."

No phones on the captains desk then Beag's:yuk:

Without a doubt the worst item of in flight I have had the misfortune to order was the "racing chickin" out of Nairobi:yuk: This stuff was so fuc'in tough it put Arnie to shame......even the army bods down the back couldnt face it:p

However OEU trail from Boscombe to somewhere in Nevada and it's Joe's route check:O One lame duck bends into St Louis and we dutifly follow. Hasty handling agent/hotel/caterer faff but all seems to fall into place...........possible upgrade coming:uhoh:

A nice evening in town and a trip up the "tower" is spoiled by the fast jet bods, sneaky b@stards, fixin the dead jet early and like the start of the grand national..... were off:ok: Quick call to caterers reveal they can't help, not enough notice, so a call to the handlers reveals they can access most civvy outlets. I order pizza and sub rolls for all on board, 23 pax and 6 crew, as its a planned 4 hour leg. All change as we are now going down the road to Oklahoma and it's only just over 1 hour flying time. Handlers pitch up with 2 golf carts laden with food.....a dustbin lid the size of Bournmouth for everyone and a "yard long" plus chips etc .....examiners cool is slowly dissapearing. however imagine Krakatoa and you have some idea of the pooh I was in when the very helpful caterers pitched up with our assorted main meals gateaux etc etc. He was last seen heading for the airport perimeter swearing and hasten to add no upgrade for Joe:O

Managed to salvage most of it at Oklahoma by getting the hotel to chill it overnight and did'nt poisen anyone the following day.

Best rations have come inlots of places but "supermarket shop" in Bari has produced some superb in flight delights but any of the curry/samosa/spling loll/nan bread combinations form Muscat etc have to rate as some of the best food around.

al spelling mistakes are "df"alcohol induced

[BEagle]

Guesting as an Examiner on 'Shiny' Ten, we flew from BAH to AKT. I thought that the in-flight rationing was perhaps a bit meagre - but it wasn't a particularly long leg so no big deal. After getting to the accommodation block, the reason for the meagreness was obvious - tray after tray of canapes, lobster tails etc.....which the pie master and his cohort of thieves had hidden away during the flight and then laid out for a 'room party' so that they wouldn't have to pay for a kebab out of their own pockets. "Glad I won't be signing for your cabin crew's fraud", I told the captain - then the real aircrew went off to Polis' for a proper kebab, leaving the thieves to their own devices.

[stillin1]

Worst in-flight grub:
Just about every effort produced out of Brize N for consumption by the self-loading-frieght.
For professionals who have been in the business for years the in-flight grub productions are frankly appauling. I strongly suspect penny-pinching from above as being the prime reason coupled with a staggering lack of imagination.
Best in-flight grub:
The very next meal after Brize's efforts.
Most amusing:
The beautifully cut one centemeter long bits of kit-kat wrapped in yards of cling-film + crisp packet designed to expolde at 20k cabin alt in cruise+mini orange juice carton minus straw (loose article hasard)+sarnies minus butter(flammable whilst chewing in an oxy mask). Oh! the cling-filmed apple was a ****** to get in to as well. :cool:

[BEagle]

Like many other things, stillin 1, it's just indicative of the change from excellence to bare adequacy which has been going on now for 15+ years.

Where once you had military chefs doing their best to show what they could do, you now have civvie contractors working down to a price.... That said, they're probably doing the best they can in the face of constant cut-backs, as you imply.

Whatever happened to BIG 'Waggon wheels' and 'George's Family Crisps' which we used to get from AKT? Their moussaka was always prety good - as were the chili con carne and Chinese pork. Strange how even in a VC10K2/3 we were able to feed our passengers pretty well, but on a wretched Albert (with the same oven) the same number of pax are either starved or just given the dreaded S1 box!

In fact the folk at ASI are capable of providing some very good in-flight catering - which made the BZN-supplied cack dished out on the southbound Timmy even less palatable. But a quick trip to the Timmy loo with one's illicit hip-flask helped to anaesthetise the journey......allegedly!

[Yeehah]

Most difficult in flight meal to eat was prior to Red Flag Detachment on Jags when we had to practice AAR for hours on end out over the North Sea - you know the scene - take it off the tanker whilst jettisoning it out the back so you didn't fall out of the basket.

Anyway we had asked Colt Mess for a packed lunch to while away the time so having backed off a little way, clenched the contol column between your knees, unwrapped white paper bag to find, among other things, a hard boiled egg still in its shell!!

[bay17-20]

Beags

Not a good comparision between the Herc and K2/3, Herc has an oven that takes 4 meals at a time requiring at least 20 mins to heat.

90 plus pax down the back, interlocking knees, a trip to the can ensure's that you tread on every person between you and the green curtain and if you want to feed them all a hot meal it would take 7.5 hours, the C130 maybe slower, but it would still mean you could not feed all the SLF, who goes without? The "royals" at the front end?

Most 130 ALM's do their very best to feed the PAX as best they can bless 'em, and their ability to "hit" a pax at 20 yards with a Mk 1 buttie box would impress any quarterback.

[BEagle]

bay17-20 - if memory serves, the max no. of pax in VC10K2 was 18 and 17 in a K3.

Galley working space was about 2 ft; however, even as a relief captain working as trolley-tart I managed (with the help of the GE - thanks, JR) to feed everyone 2x3 course hot meals plus appropriate snacks on a 10 hour trip from Ellsworth to Brize. Including the AOC of the day plus his bottom-wiper.

Whereas in the wretched Albert, 18 pax would only get an S1 box - or even 2 (oh, joy...!!):yuk:. Which would, as you rightly state, probably be thrown at them by the pie-master...

[Art Field]

Beags, you are reviving memories of trips in the States catered by Dave B......, two packed trollies, three courses, hand prepared salad, choice of sweets, after dinner mints, cool towels for the face, did I dream it, did that world really exist once upon a time?. I think it did and because the food was bought in supermarkets and crew managed it was probably as cheap as contract catering.

[BEagle]

Yes - those days really did exist! Plus it was much cheaper than using handling agents, as you say.

But that was before the food-preparation police - and before the stupid rules about who could be trolley-tarts led to pie-masters invading our hallowed world:mad:

Nice food on the A330-200 I flew in from Brize last year though;)

[adrian mole]

Many Moons ago on 53 Sqn Belfasts there was a Loadie called Paddy Kane who used to take on board with him a small bag full of metal cutlery, sauces etc and look after everyone on board without exeption. sadly the old boy is no longer with us and neither is his attitude towards the catering. You could never forget flying with Paddy once you'd had the tap on the shoulder whilst strapped in for the take-off and be handed a brimming hot cup of coffee!

[D-IFF_ident]

OC BZN Inflight is my neighbour and would welcome any constructive suggestions. Post away and I'll keep printing the thread for him.....

I, however, am not a caterer; I just eat the stuff.

[BEagle]

No longer being in the mob, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to make any suggestions. I'm sure that BZN in-flight continue to do the best they can within the budget allowed....

A couple of observations:

Too many individual items in the S1 box, many of which are never eaten. Fewer, but better perhaps?

Does 'RAF fruit juice' come in any flavour other than orange?

[FFP]

Halloumi Roll out of AKT

Onion Bhaji out of Abu Dhabi

Samosas out of Colombo.

[Chinese Vic]

Best::D My first trip on a C-17, coming home from VERITAS out of Seeb via Thumrait. The loadie produced two outstanding hot meals for everyone on board (including us 'self loading freight') -chicken in a red wine sauce I recall?

Worst::{ About any S1/Mk1 Butty box you could mention...my heart's racing now just thinking about all the 'E' numbers in the crappy crisps and pop!

CV:ok:

[Echo 5]

Chinese Vic,

I almost took offence there, thought you were having a go at me.

Regards,

E5

[Dan Winterland]

Scene - a Red Flag many years ago. Exercise Admin Orders required the big aircraft to provide receipts for re-payment from the Det cashier. Us, the VC10 and the Albert had the good idea of catering from Burger King. Fast and cheap.

Det cashier didn't like this. Refused to pay for burgers. We just accepted it, but the C 130 loadie knew the rules and used the 38gp catering instructions as a guide which mentioned that when at USAF airfields it was permissable to order from the local civvie airport. The case mentioned being Nellis where food could be ordered from McCarren.

The next day, the cashier was handed a bill for well over a thousand dollars. Burgers all round after that!

[BUMPFF]

So nothing much has changed then? My kids used to enjoy the Kit-Kat from the AH boxes though and the Cornish pasties full of dogsh!t and bust tickets.

Yours,
Transport Command 1959 through to Whatever Command it became in 1977.