"Why do airlines persist in serving us in-flight meals? "
 

Their journalist clearly flies on the wrong airline. Some have surprisingly good meals, given the constraints (although yes, in some cases the in-flight magazine would probably be better). I don't see the point on a short flight, but when you're going long-haul, it's probably easier for them to serve food because then people won't be trying to bring their own and add unknown extra weight to the aircraft, not to mention the issues of disposing of the residual food if the destination doesn't allow it to be imported.

Another pointless article by Simon Calder who in his own article answers his own question.

Mr Calder must have had a bad flight where the food was rubbish and therefore he took 'pen to paper' hence the article. He would be better suited to writing an article on why airlines charge exorbitant fares during UK half term holidays.

He obviously agrees. :O

An e-petition against holiday price hikes in the school breaks has attracted more than 140,000 signatures - but will it change things? - News & Advice - Travel - The Independent

Supply and demand?

Well, regulation of airfares is no longer in the powers of the CAA or any EU member state. And good thing with people asking for silly things like this.

Far better to have the schools be in session 12 months of the year and to let parents and teachers choose when to take their vacations just like in business. No doubt you would still have peak pricing at Christmas or Easter, for example, but not everyone would choose to go then. Forcing everyone to go at the same time causes peak pricing.

Or they could stagger the holidays county buy county, like the French/Swiss do and smooth out the peaks.

Not really, because they do not.

You just get discounted flight prices during the school term.

Its easy to work this out as if the companies did charge the discounted price all year round they would go out of business, and so its the 'school term' price which is closer to the real price.

My complaint about airline meals is not the blandness - but when they, literally, spice them up. They want to make them more tasty at Fl360 and think that adding spices is the way to go. A few years ago on VS in PE, I could not eat any of the meals due to spices.

The CC asked why I had not ordered a special meal and I said that I was not a vegetarian, nor was I intolerant of lactose etc. but I was intolerant of spices. The head CC arrived (very polite) and I explained that in all my years of paxing this was the first time I had been asked to choose from a menu that contained nothing I could eat. She brought me the Upper menu and told me what was surplus and I had a good meal. So bland might not be such a bad idea.

I think Mr Calder (the journo) is running out of things to write about.

On the thread drift topic of school holidays, I was discussing this last night with friends who have x2 at school:
"We are told not to take our children out of school. The govt just took a teacher out of school for jury duty for up to one month. The pupils will now have supply teachers and others. So the govt has disrrupted 30 pupils in one go. Result? :hmm:"

The Government has nothing to with the selection of jurors. The idea is juries are made of a cross section of society so inevitably some teachers will end up serving on a jury, just as there will be taxi drivers, hair dressers, actors etc etc on juries.

There is also a bit of difference between the needs of a fair legal system to have a balance of individuals on a jury, on what could be a court case of some real importance to several individuals, compared with a parents desire to take their kids to Torremolinos for a week in the sun and avoid paying the market price - even if times 30.

Back to meals
 

If you don't like the in-flight meal don't eat it. I understand the constraints and I appreciate the legacy carriers offering a meal. I never complained about the quality/ quantity of the food. And I do hope it is going to be maintained in short flights (intra European ones) and having the option to choose the ones offering a flight.

And once a time I got a second meal and it was great.

Please expand on this! I can't remember the last time that I had a "surprisingly good meal" on an aircraft.

The only reason, as far as I can tell, for the dinner service is to interrupt your sleep with noxious fumes / in-flight entertainment watching with constant interruptions from crew.

The last flight I was on (16 hours on Qantas) it was so bad, for both meals, that the smell woke my daughter up and caused frequent trips to and from the loos to dispose of sick bags (hers, but I would feel the same were I not so used to the stench by now).

Perhaps because they can sell enough at full price, without having to discount them to sell?

So it can give you some alcohol too, to keep you quiet for most of the flight.

And because 12 hours is a long time to expect people to go without food (or at least a pale imitation of food in economy).

Would she be better off if half the passengers had brought bags of McDonalds' 'meals' with them?

What I wonder is why, every time I fly Business Class, they seem to have some kind of seafood component in the meal. My girlfriend is allergic to pretty much all kinds of seafood, so she'd be in trouble if she was up front with me.

Well I actually enjoy the meals mostly. Plus no one is exactly force feeding anyone to eat them. Considering many airlines charge for meals the whole article is a bit of a moot point

Surely the best option is to have simple microwavable food available. If you are hungry and want to eat then you pop up to a servery, take something out of the fridge, stick it in the microwave for the requisite time (easily done with, say, a barcode on the meal and barcode reader to operate the microwave) and bring it back on a tray to eat.

Then you clear up by taking the tray back and binning the remnants in the same way as you do at McDonalds.

That way you don't end up with the ovens stinking the cabin out, then everybody eating at once further stinking the cabin out, and then waiting ages after everyone has finished eating before your trays get cleared away.

But then I have never understood the need to eat on a plane. No flights are longer than 16 hours or so and that is easily manageable by a meal at the airport beforehand and a light snack on the plane. Why would anybody want to eat terrible food on the plane?

"Well I actually enjoy the meals mostly."

+ 1


Most people couldn't go 16 hours without food, even with a meal beforehand
and a snack during.

Virgin Atlantic meals are pretty good, I guess you've not flown with them recently. I wasn't impressed with United's offering as the other airline I've used in the past few months.

Do airlines have microwave ovens on their aircraft? I thought not, but not sure the reason why. (besides they probably are not useful heating a couple hundred meals at a time)