Britannia ski flights on 767-200 1hr 30min 273 to 290 pax

on ski flights pax were mostly well healed

hot towel
free headphones for music
newspaper
sweet
hot meal with a free bottle of wine on tray
tea/coffee followed along right behind
duty free

simples - all done no fuss
no one moaned
crew hard work but had fun
passengers loved it

on longer flights the bar trolley would be first and a second round of drinks after the meal if there was time on say RHO/TFS

$40,000 according to : How to cure airlines? ills - Business - US business - Aviation | NBC News

Late 80s/early 90s.

Some interesting background on the long-running spat between BA and AA in this Fortune Magazine article from 1990:

AMERICAN TAKES ON THE WORLD With tough guy Robert Crandall at the controls, this airline has soared to the top of the U.S. industry. Now it's pushing into fast-growing international markets. - September 24, 1990

Of course, they have long since kissed and made up. :O

Went to that same RAeS meeting - the evening's host, in the vote of thanks,
referred to Crandall as 'Mr Cranston' on more than one, cringeworthy, occasion !
(apols for thread drift)

You can get really bad food pretty much anywhere (or none at all if you're flying Y within America), tolerable food (NZ Y, LH C) and really good food (EK C, NZ C, LH F).

I tend to self-cater if I'm on standby - fruit, shelled walnuts, a piece of good cheese and a bento box. Mostly attract envious looks from fellow pax who are picking at an undefinable piece of dead animal in brown sauce...

The answer is to stick with one's favoured airlines:

Between Europe and my current location, for their food and schedules, I'll happily use Cathay Pacific all the time if their fare is right.

I'll happily use Swiss out of UK (LON, BHX, MAN) because often their fares are cheaper than the supposed LoCo's, they offer schedules to suit and their cabin service is second to none.

The few times I've flown with SAS, despite paying for their drinks and grub, it was of a good standard and one could eat and drink as much as one liked.

And even Ukraine International Airlines, reasonable grub but the (Ukrainian) Slavutich beer came in 500ml cans (none of your nancy boy 250ml mixer sizes) and so complimented would the Ukrainian cabin crew be that one actually liked their beer they weren't stingy with it either :)

MALEV was another good one but alas they've gone.

Stick with the ones that offer a quality and bin the ones that don't.

I wish that airlines would post what they will serve on a given flight on their website. Late evening out of LHR - SIN full evening meal. (Very) late evening out of HKG - LHR on return - no meal until breakfast. Not serving a meal in the early hours may be sensible its but nice to know in advance. I personally think that having a well stocked galley for snacks on flights over ten hours is essential.


I presume that North American carriers can get away with not serving food on longer flights as passengers no longer expect it. In Asia pax still do. I wonder if an American carrier would benefit with charging a small premium for better service? CO tried it for a while but it didn't work. With only three large carriers I can't see it happening.


Laker stopped including food in the late 70s. Me, I still see a long haul flight as something of a special occasion and like a proper meal, but maybe I'm old fashioned.

i think Laker only started to charge for food on the very first Skytrain flights to the USA.
the IT charters were still catered - IIRC Laker reintroduced free hot meals on their USA flights - i used them often until their collapse and i did not pay for meals on Miami or LAX.

It was Thomson holidays that were the first tour operator (and airline - in the form of Britannia) to unravel the original package holiday (where you got it all flight/baggage/seat number/meal -hot usually-coach transfer and hotel with all meals as booked)
this unravelling was all done under the title ''Just for You''
then the lo-co airlines started and the rest is history....

we have to blame Thomson for the mess we are now in with ridiculous charges and extras and no food on 5 hour flights etc etc

even the legacy carriers have cut back enormously hence no meal on a SIN-LHR flight until breakfast time!
awful

It is useful being able to have a meal when you are diabetic, the meeting has over-run and you arrive at the airport just in time for the flight. And it does happen far more frequently than is desirable....Which is why I always insist on flying business class in Europe.

As far as really long haul is concerned, it is very necessary when one is diabetic.

Peter47,

Was this also BA?

I work for BA, and operated a HKG trip only a couple of weeks ago, and it had a full meal service ex-HKG. As did the one I worked about 5 months before that, and about 6 months before that too.

I am not aware of any changes to the onboard product and having just looked at the service guidelines and standards for the route, there is still a full dinner service ex-HKG on both evening departures.

QATAR Airways give you TWO meals on a five hour flight.:ok:

Albeit one of those is a microwaved Pizza in a cardboard box.......

I look forward to the meals and and of course the wine as it breaks up the boredom of the in fight movie,s which unfortunately do not get changed enough (even on EK/SQ with 100,s to chose from) and are some times of variable quality - not the airlines issue I would add. If you fly long haul over once a month (which I guess a number of people on here do) with the same carrier you invariably get months when on the first trip you see every movie you want to out of the selection available, and then on the next trip you are stuck again with same selection. I know that you can down load to tablet but that's just more kit to carry AND SMALLER SCREEN.

Air Koryo Beijing to Pyongyang (1999) in a Il-18, piping hot Chinese 'takeaways', the return trip some weeks later in Tu-154B one very small but highly polished apple.

thread drift
On the 'flip' from Honolulu to Kauai - about 24 mins wheels-to-wheels (not taxi time), they said they would serve drinks. We weren't thirsty but wanted to see how they did it. :p

1. take pax orders before start
2. only have a variety of fruit juices
3. serve in plastic cups so that -
4. - collecting the cups can be throwing them into a plastic sack on the let down!
5. :ok:

188 on an A321 served a sandwich and drinks in 26 minutes LHR to MAN… before the sandwiches were taken off.

252 on a 767 served a hot english breakfast, tea and coffee in 52 minutes LHR to GLA.

It can be done… If organised enough.

I have to admit I was always mildly irritated by the meals on the BOS-LHR flights. By the time you're airborne and cabin services has started, you've eaten your meal and the residue cleared away, there's not much time left for a nap. At least on the flights from the other side of the US there's more opportunity for sleep.

If you don't like airline food just come to the US. You won't have a problem. They don't serve any.

Tray Surfer
I remember when BMI used to serve full evening meal with pre dinner drink on the LHR - Leeds evening service which sometimes involved circling over Yorkshire to allow crew to clear up trays !. This was in the mid 1980,s however.

MrMac was that on our lovely Viscount?

also we did LPL-LHR first early morning flight in 1978/9
DC-9 hot breakfast for up to 85 pax all done in 20 mins - admit it didn't last long but we still managed it

rog747
It was a DC9 back then, and the inflight service I believe was called Diamond Service or something like, but it was quite a while ago so I could be wrong. I flew on your service into Liverpool once in about 1985/86, and it was one of the quietest flights I have ever been on, mid morning from memory and I think something like 8 passengers on a DC9. The route was dropped shortly afterwards.
I do not remember flying on Viscounts with BMI, it was DC9, ATP, 737 when I was using you in that period, and before that I was using London Airways with 1-11 and Tridents. I changed company in 87 and they had a policy of using London Airways so that was my last period of flying with you until early 2001 when I was a regular on the Man - Chicago flight for a while. You were a very good airline in my humble opinion back then, and the Diamond service was considerably better than the opposition in the UK.

mr mac

yup things were nice in those days!

Most of my flights have been between USA and UK and the in-flight meals may not be the world's greatest food but it is part of the fun of travel and I enjoy them - and the drinks! No cooking, no washing up, what's not to like?!

I have frequently paid £10-20 extra to get the best airline food and drink on my route, and that has often been BA. AA has been pretty poor and the flight is a worse experience because of that.

Ah well, if you're clever (and of course if you have the choice) you fly out at the end of one month and fly back at the start of the next...

Regarding airline meals I've never had a problem with SIA both biz and cattle. The only problem I find is when doing Oz-UK biz is that you get a 2 hour stopover in Changi and tend to hit the lounge buffet. Then it's just bad manners to refuse their very good tucker when you get on the next leg of the flight, so finish up getting off at LHR liked a bloated whale. I might add I have no self control.

I've had trips where I didn't want to watch any of the movies available. Normally I spend ten minutes constructing a playlist from the audio section and listening to that while trying to sleep. Generally I find sleep on long-haul to be more valuable than movies.

Yes, well, that's why god (or at least Apple) invented the iPad.

Those of us who travel regularly no doubt already have a laptop in the bag, so adding 1 x iPad and 1 x Charger cable (which is the same for an iPhone) is not exactly taking up much extra room in the old hand luggage. :E

It's a true story.

The airline business is cyclic and the cycle is usually 5 years. Every 5 years we would go on a save weight onboard exercise - once involving the entire company in a suggestion process. It's amazing how saving weight can save money. The trick is to not let good customer service get bashed by it. (if you care about customer service that is).

I have generally stuck to my own airline for most travel and the food is almost always decent with one notable lav scramble incident.

Out of the UK I always bring two bacon sarnies with me for the hell of it and always enjoy them.

I fly 5 times a year LGW-TPA with BA- excellent vegan meal and tasty late afternoon vegan snack- no complaints:ok:

Mr Mac


I flew with BMI from either CDG or AMS to LHR - I forget which - in economy in diamond service days, a 40 min flight. The cabin crew got up & started serving full meals almost as soon as the plane rotated on its take off run. In a way very impressive, but I wonder what a CAA inspector would have thought. I don't think that BA would have pulled it off at the time.

On most airlines these days the catering, in terms of meal portions, is liberally dosed with either loperamide, diphenoxylate/atropine or loratadine. This ensures that passengers, generally, have a safe and comfortable flight, untroubled by any unpleasantness which they might have contracted by way of an intestinal infection either en route or prior to departure. Aircraft meals thus serve an extremely useful sociological function without which embarrassment of a ghastly eructational or even green slimy and ghoulish nature might be more common place. So eat hearty on board and put up with the occasional bout of post long haul phantom constipation.

cavortingcheetah You do enjoy a joke. :p

Chortle!

A friend of mine had a few flights on AA and regularly found that the vegetarian meal she ordered contained chicken. One flight attendant assured her that chicken is suitable for vegetarians and that if she did not like it she could "just eat around it"!

Peter 47
I know what you mean about the cart being out soon after rotation !. Only other airline at about the same era with that ethos was Finnair. On a Friday night flight back to Helsinki from London, I think the crew and cart were on the starting blocks soon after the gear came up, and never seemed to stop going up and down A/C all the way there !!. Some very merry Finns by the time we got to Helsinki, I commented on this to one of the crew and was told wait till you see price of booze in Finland, and that this was quite normal on that flight !.

Late last year I flew BA ..... IAH - LHR and was sitting next to Jewish gentleman in WT+. I am not sure what he had but the smell had me gagging literally until his tray was removed. In general the food is not bad, I do however go for the veggie meal out of choice.

I know what you mean, Ainippe. I cannot stomach the smell of spicy food. Nowadays, airlines like to offer curry items. Even though these are described as 'mild' that is still x10 what I can take.

One of the worst was coffee. As with spices, I cannot abide the smell (leave alone the taste) and there was a BM service in Biz (Diamond, I suppose, not a regular on BD) from LHR to ABZ the first out one morning. They were boasting about their filter coffee and the chap next to me had one of those large flagons of the stuff and was waving it around saying how fabulous it was.

I was holding my napkin over my mouth and nose, as the English breakfast was very good and I didn't want to lose it ... :uhoh:

I like the smell of coffee, much more than I like the taste.

It's unwise to drink tea on Lufthansa and a poor idea to swill coffee on British Airways. On British Midland though, BA's sister company(?), the airline apparently uses Kopi Luwak coffee which is a little more pungent and considerably more expensive than the normal black manure pit run off served on the UK national flag flapper.
Comair in South Africa, which is reputedly a BA sub servant airline is believed by some to produce in flight coffee by boiling the buttons cut from the uniforms of the dead of the 24th Regiment of Foot, (2nd Warwickshire Regiment ) after the great battle of 22 January, 1879.

In the good old days CP Air (before they became Canadi>n) used to have a coffee drink called, I think, Empress … something or other. It was exquisite ! Good coffee, some good Canadian whiskey, cointreau and whipped cream. They used to mix it seat side and ask you how much of each ingredient you wanted. They were very generous. This was also before there was a domestic business class. Just First and Economy. This was Economy!

Meals were served on china, with a silver service.

To die for on the evening flight out of Toronto back to Vancouver.

On Caribbean Airways (aka Laker) to/from Barbados they served a complimentary Basian rum punch ... We got thru a gallon of it one night shift and bl00dy good stuff it was ...

Well it would appear the cabin crew weren't mixing it sufficiently before serving it so a memo went around something to the effect "The passengers at the front are sitting there as if they're in church whilst the passengers down the back are singing" :)

However much some people might not like the smell of airline catering I reckon it would be far worse if everyone brought on their own. Burgers, Kebabs and KFC stink in a plane? No thanks, London Tubes and buses are bad enough for that, and you are usually on them for only a few minutes!