Airline Food: There Have Been Many Jokes About it.

Here's one:

I was on a flight to Hong Kong once. The flight would be seven hours long, so I decided to get some shuteye. I was soon awakened by the stewardess, who asked me if I would like some dinner. I said, "What are my choices?"

And she said, "Yes or no."

The trouble is that in a recent survey in the United States 40 percent of people questioned said an on-board, full meal was the service they valued the most. In other words, jokes aside, people want value for money by getting a good meal.

In this regard the survey, by SeatGuru, a popular US based website which offers information on airplane seating [ another top priority for long distant flights, of course ] showed that Asian carriers like Cathay, Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways all offered pretty good food.

But they are generally long haul international carriers, whereas the US domestic market, by far the world's biggest, has a multitude of large carriers flying distances no more than five or six hours within the US itself.

Travellers on these carriers are not so well off when it comes to food. The SeatGuru survey found US airline food offerings, if they have any at all, are decidedly dodgy. Here are the rankings for the worst food: American Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways and Delta Air Lines. The best food came from Singapore Airlines, British Airways [eh? British food?] Continental and Air France [ but of course ]

Of course some of the US airlines named are disputing the findings. They quite rightly point out that you are not going to get a full meal on a flight from New York to Dallas as it is too short.

Low cost carriers sell their food on board. Some of it is not bad and reasonably priced but at the end of the day the customer still looks for more than this in airline food, which will continue to be the butt of jokes no matter how hard the airlines try.

Thursday, 16th July 2009 at 7:21am

By Alastair Carthew, a former aviation employee, newspaper and television journalist. He is a freelance writer and consultant living on Phuket. Click here to go directly to his website: www.acprcounsel.com.