Jeremy Clark
Food glorious food Jeremy Clark enjoys plane food. Email your comments to:
clarkjeremy@hotmail.co.uk
If IFSA Colombo was anything to go by, food is still our No.1 priority. What a fabulous host Sri Lanka Catering was with its co-contributors. It’s just
a shame many passengers don’t get the same standards as we set for ourselves! They say catering on planes is a thing of the
past. “The thin end of the wedge” they said as BA slashed the grub on European flights and I recall my Swissair days in the early 80s when an Economy trayset was so packed with goodies you had to carry your Toblerone with you as there was no time to eat it. Today on Swiss, you might get a solitary roll with a slice of ham thin enough to read your newspaper though. Well, here’s something to cheer us all up. I was informed that in a survey of American Airlines passenger emails to its customer services there were three features which, if altered, would result in passengers storming the offices in Dallas in true Bastille Day style: 1) Do not crash. That’s obviously never ideal. 2) Don’t lose my bags 3) Can we arrive more or less on time. On the service side it was as follows 3) The fillet steak. 2) The hot fudge sundae 1) And way ahead in first place, hot mixed nuts! Now, the more astute among you will have spotted that we are talking about the Premium cabins here and it’s true that these statistics are largely frequent fliers. But these folks contribute a large proportion of revenue, so they deserve all the hot nuts they get. Interestingly, previous surveys of passengers after their journey and across many airlines showed food as the number two or three item of importance after space and the quality of the flight attendant attributes. In the U.S. these days, the galleys in Economy
are devoid of anything but tumbleweed blowing across the floor like a deserted western town. Food is slowly finding its way back as buy-on- board but it’s similar to that loaded aboard NASA
36
www.onboardhospitality.com
missions to Mars with a shelf life of 2000 years and absolutely no redeeming culinary value. The LCCs are the ones raising the standards
of BOB. Some legacy carriers started to sell food in Economy in Europe which didn’t go down well. Swiss tried it and rethought it. In emerging markets and in Asia generally, food in Economy, even on many LCCs, is being served. Air Asia holds with the stark Ryanair approach which sees the passenger as an inconvenience, although it still treats its passengers nicely. If my only choice is Ryanair, I’ll walk thank you. I also hear legacy carriers talking of ‘unbundling’
the product. This is a reaction to LCCs’ ticketing structure and a ruse to match the competitors’ fares and then charge extra for what was
previously included by calling it ‘choice’. Ridiculous. And anyway if you look at the fare breakdown, sitting there is a big fat figure called the ‘carrier surcharge’. What on earth is that? This was acceptable when oil cost more than
Verve Cliquot, but it doesn’t any more. In fact you can suck it out of the Gulf of Mexico free of charge at the moment. As competition increases, the line between full service and LCC is ever more blurred. Soon some bright spark in marketing will suggest handing out a free snack and hiding it in the fare to get an edge over their rivals. Then where would we be? I’ll tell you: back in 1983, when trays were full and happy passengers disembarked with their Toblerones melting in their pockets.
www.nickbremer.com
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