Best/Worst In-Flight Catering
 

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?

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

Aeroflot by a million miles!!:yuk:

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.

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.

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 !!

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....

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)..

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!

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

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.

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.

: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

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.

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

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!

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

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!!

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.

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.