“Please return all seat backs, tray tables and your sense of taste to their full, upright and locked positions…”
If you’re like me, you’re a little ambivalent about airline food.
Okay, maybe more than a little.
The stuff that’s slid in front you usually has all the culinary appeal of “government cheese.” It speaks volumes when the foodie Web site Chowhound asks its members to name “the least bad airline meal” they’ve had. Not the best, just the one that didn’t entirely suck.
On the other hand, when airlines cut costs by cutting out meals, or make you pay extra for some utterly nondescript brown bag lunch grabbed from a jetway bin, you feel a bit cheated.
Airports are now offering sandwiches, pizza and other take-out food for sale near departure gates, but often at ridiculous prices. Airport security has left us no alternative to that $5 bottle of purified tap water, but do you really want to pay $11 for that turkey-on-wheat, hold-the-cellophane?
Let’s face it, if good food is a travel priority of yours, you don’t need to be on an airplane, anyway. Even so, you do have options, the first of which is to be picky about your airline.
There are Web sites, produced by experts and by air travelers alike, that rate the airlines for their fare instead of their fares. Others review the in-flight meals they’ve sampled themselves. They examine meals in all classes — Coach, Business, First — even airport lounges.
Some go so far as to take pics of their in-flight meals so you can at least see how they look.
They may even show you the meals served to flight crews — and no, they’re NOT the same as yours! What’s more, a lot of flight crew bring their own food on board with them.
As you’ll see when you check them out for yourself, air passenger surveys of airline meals can go from zero to murderous in an instant.
One of the things you’ll see consistently in those surveys is that when it comes to feeding their passengers, American airlines — including American Airlines — consistently rank toward the bottom with the flying public.
So which air carriers fly to the top of the food chain? Most often, it’s major Asian firms like Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific. Among the European carriers, Air France ranks high among frequent fliers.
(The French actually rank high in something involving food and drink. What a shock…)
Check out a survey found on SeatGuru.com. Singapore was Number One of the top four, followed by British Airways in second and Air France fourth. A US carrier, Continental, actually snuck into the third ranking among passengers. The four bottom feeders in the SeatGuru survey? American, United, US Air and Delta.
If everything else is equal in terms of price, connections and seat comfort on a long-haul flight, you might want to look for an airline that feeds more than just your sense of adventure.
If you’re serious about trying to maintain a healthful diet, whether on advice of your doctor, for religious reasons or just to stay sleek and sexy in that coach seat, what you consume when you’re airborne is important.
It’s also important to your morale. On really long flights lasting five hours or more, a good meal (or two) may be the second-most important thing you have to look forward to — other than getting off the plane. It’s equally important if you travel with kids. Nothing like some tasty treats to keep their spirits up, and short-circuit that infamous and endlessly repeated question: “Are we there yet?”
Some airline web sites will let you in on the meals they plan to serve on your specific flight; most won’t. You can take your chances, or you can:
Order a special meal, or
bring your own
Virtually every airline offers special meals that meet specific dietary or religious requirements, and you can usually select those offerings listed on their Web sites. Not into red meat? You can order seafood. Not into flesh of any kind? These days, they offer multiple types of vegetarian fare.
Jewish? Muslim? Hindu? The airlines have you covered, but you don’t have to practice any of those faiths to order any of those meals, which often are better than standard fare. Lactose intolerant? Gluten intolerant? Allergic to nuts? The airlines will hook you up.
It gets better. Those who order special meals get fed before the rest of the passengers. Best of all, you don’t pay a dime extra. All the airlines ask is that you give them a certain minimum advance notice, usually about three days before your flight, if you want one of their special meals. That’s fair.
There’s one last option, and some think it’s the best one. You can prepare your own in-flight meals and snacks, and bring them on the plane with you.
And yes, there are sites with advice on how to do that, too. With a little thought and preparation, you can make tasty, nutritious meals for you and/or your family with minimum hassle.
You find those sites, along with other sites related to airline food, on the Cool Travel Sites page on this blog.
You may notice that some of those sites haven’t been updated in a few years. Then again, neither have the menus of many airlines, so it all evens out.