Do you get breakfast down route?

[senorbob]

I’m interested to find out which airlines provide breakfast in the hotel down route on trips. At BA, I know that LGW crew get breakfast on all SH and most LH (excl.USA), WW/EF crew get meal allowances instead and Mixed Fleet crew get no breakfast at all.

Looking at different airlines packages for crew, breakfast isn’t mentioned in the specs, but I think breakfast is quite valuable as it means you have to spend less so your salary goes further. What happens at your airline?

[Zabibi]

I worked in Etihad airways before. We used to get breakfast quite often I must say... I loved the breakfast buffées in London and in Jakarta. But think they removed it in CGK now.. But mostly, we had it and it was great. I later worked for a middle eastern vip airline and we usually didnt have it.. On the other hand we could take with us ANY food/drinks/whatever from the aircrafts... I love breakfast though, and it really helps getting through the day better.

[Mr Angry from Purley]

Working for a UK Airline(?) gotta to be careful as the taxman will see it as a benefit and tax you accordingly. A lot of Hotels only offer B+B rates in contracts so if you get it keep quiet

[Betty girl]

Senorbob,

Mixed fleet get an hourly rate which is designed to pay for breakfast.

BA Gatwick crew have negotiated a breakfast allowance on top of their hourly rate for some destinations but not all.

BA WW and E/F get paid allowances which are triggered as they pass a window for a meal while away or on the aircraft but they don't get an hourly rate.

You can't really compare them all because they are all completely different agreements.

[gchangflyer]

We get muesli,artificial yoghurt and a plastic croissant;)

[Pontius Navigator]

Working for a UK Airline(?) gotta to be careful as the taxman will see it as a benefit and tax you accordingly. A lot of Hotels only offer B+B rates in contracts so if you get it keep quiet

I don't think you are correct here. Throughout my working life I have received subsistence either as a cash sum per meal or against actuals. In some cases no meal was purchased although of course actuals were against real bills.

Your employer may well have an agreement with HMRC and you are expected only to claim for reasonable costs. The odd bottle of expensive Bordeaux will not raise an eyebrow (usually) but unless you happen to have a habit like the late QM or WSC then Champagne for breakfast may be taxable.

[Betty girl]

P N,

UK airline's crew are taxed in a different way to you.

Many airlines in the UK pay an hourly allowance or a meal allowance to top up airline crew's pay. These payments benefit the airlines because they don't include them in their crew's pensionable pay and, because as they are allowances, they carry a tax benefit to the crew also.

The taxman is very aware that these payments are not used solely for paying for food and tax them accordingly, only allowing some of the payments to be tax free.

Every few years, each of the airline's crews have to go through an audit process, where some crew are picked and have to provide receipts for their purchases to justify the tax free element of these allowances. Therefore they would be very interested if they thought some crew were not actually paying for their breakfast. I have to say though that, no hotels that I personally stay in gives free breakfast. Mores the shame!

[Pontius Navigator]

Betty, I see no conflict there. You say some payments are tax free. This suggests that the allowances exceed what HMRC consider essential and therefore there is a tax liability. We were 'lucky' that our allowances clearly fell below the treasury limits although I would admit to having some difficulty getting through £200 per day in Oslo or £250 in Italy :)