by Richard Foss
The enthusiasm for serving gourmet food and providing choices did not extend to noncompetitive routes, especially for passengers in the rear cabins. Passengers on BOAC’s flights from London to Australia had no choice of main courses for the entire thirty-hour flight and had to pay for alcoholic drinks. On the same airline’s flights to the Persian Gulf in 1971, then-catering coordinator George Banks remembered that in Bahrain BOAC loaded the same meal, a “turkey and asparagus mimosa,” almost every day. They did this even though the catering operation at Bahrain had a wide selection and was well run by the standards of the era and region—at Abu Dhabi, sometimes it was difficult to even get water that could be loaded on board.
This is a reminder that the jet age arrived in some places that were barely out of the Stone Age, and it took heroic efforts to maintain reliable meals in places where roads deteriorated into muddy tracks outside the airport. European inspectors who made unannounced visits to inspect catering facilities sometimes came back with horror stories; Banks recalled a visit to the hotel restaurant in Banjul that catered first-class meals for British Caledonian flights in the 1970s. He was shocked to find that the cook preferred to work with his pet monkey sitting on his shoulder, a habit that would not be acceptable in a European catering operation.6 Other African-owned catering kitchens were well run—Ghana Airways operated a flight kitchen in Accra that was clean, efficient, and turned out meals to high standards. That operation was something of an anomaly in the former British colonies in Africa. The former French colonies benefited from a chain of flight service kitchens operated by UTA that served Air Afrique and other carriers; these turned out meals of international standards and supplied African food options.
Many airports in the developing world had been converted from military airfields, and some were sited far from cities where there could be any choice of services. Local governments often operated these as monopolies, and some developed a reputation for dreadful or unreliable food. Sometimes the logistics departments of the international carriers found ways to bypass loading any meals at places were the food was poor or priced extravagantly because the local caterers figured that they had no competition. British Caledonian Airlines devised ingenious ways of compressing and stacking food in the refrigerated holds so they could carry two flight segments’ worth of food in the space usually used for one.7
When meals were substandard, or didn’t show up at all, whether because of strikes, road blockages, ordering mistakes, or other reasons, airline staff had to improvise. Experienced crews who flew routes that had a reputation for unreliability often packed a few loaves of bread, some cheeses, and cold cuts in a closet so that if food didn’t arrive they could make sandwiches, arrange them prettily, and have something to serve. If too few meals were loaded, the crew could rearrange the food on the trays and add sandwiches on the side, and passengers might not even notice that lunch looked a bit different than usual. Occasionally food that was loaded for the crew was actually served to passengers; a South African Airways stewardess named Lynn McJarrow recalled that on a flight from Johannesburg to London, the fruit platters loaded for breakfast looked so bad that the crew refused to serve them. Several fruit baskets had been loaded for the crew to snack on, so while passengers were still asleep the crew cut up whatever they had and arranged it. As she recalled, “It took forever as our knives were not sharp veggie knives but the eating knives that don’t cut that well. Nevertheless, the passengers got a great breakfast and one man even commented that the fruit looked better than what he has been accustomed to on previous flights. I just smiled.”8
Carriers that flew to remote places with low hygiene standards had to consider another problem: getting their silverware clean in places where there was little water. In the late 1960s a company called Intercontinental Air Caterers in London had a solution: the first completely prepackaged meals using disposable utensils, called “Sky Diners.” The plastic and paper utensils also saved weight, always a consideration aboard aircraft, and when a hot entrée was included, it was served in a lightweight foil tray. The meals in disposable containers with plastic utensils were then regarded as a novelty, and their ease of use and cheapness made them a favorite of British charter companies like Dan Air as well as safari charter operators. Since everything was made to cater to the tastes of British tourists, items like steak and kidney pie and shepherd’s pie were staples as aircraft flew over African deserts and jungles.
Along with holiday charter operations, Dan Air operated scheduled flights to Ireland and short hops inside Europe, routes with such brief flight times that food service was difficult. The airline came up with one of the worst ideas in airline food history to deal with this problem, a plan called seat-back catering.9 This involved stocking a meal for every passenger inside the seat in front of them, and giving each flyer a key that could be used to unlock the storage compartment for use when they got hungry. While this enabled food service without taking stewardess time, it was a failure on multiple levels. The meals for both the outbound and return flights had been locked in adjacent compartments, and hungry passengers quickly figured out that the same key unlocked both. This meant that passengers on the second leg of the flight often found that the previous person in their seat had eaten their lunch or dinner. Also, since Dan Air flew many routes of several hours’ duration, whatever meal had been locked in that compartment for the second leg of the trip might have been unrefrigerated for six or seven hours. Even by the low standards of English budget-class tourists of the 1960s and ’70s, this was unacceptable. Seat-back catering was one of the most spectacular failures of the era, and it only lasted about two years before being discontinued. It had taken some ingenuity, but someone had come up with a standard of economy-class airline catering so low that it prompted a revolt among passengers.
Though the airline wasn’t known for luxury in this era, Aeroflot did their best to project an image of stylish food and service in these ads from 1965.
Image provided by Aeroflot
Savvy travelers who were looking for low fares and higher standards on international flights could still find them, often among the carriers that hadn’t bought 747s and flew older and less fashionable aircraft. Finnair offered some of the most exotic cuisine aloft aboard their DC-8s, including various herring dishes, reindeer soup, smoked lamb, and a selection of berry-infused aquavits. British Caledonian, which flew a wide network from London’s Gatwick airport, maintained Scottish-style service wherever they went, with smoked salmon to start and Walker’s shortbread to finish every meal. The airline was noted for publicity stunts like having a bagpiper escort a haggis on board a flight on the birthday of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. Other airlines, like Holland’s Martinair, were less flamboyant but concentrated on bringing back passengers with steady, high-quality service.
Image provided by Aeroflot
In Asia, the differences in price and quality between globe-spanning and minor lines were even greater. Non-IATA carriers like Malaysia-Singapore Airlines, Thai International, and Cathay Pacific offered multicourse meals with a choice of entrée at a time when their competitors didn’t. When Malaysia and Singapore dissolved their federation in 1965, there was doubt that the latter needed an airline at all—the tiny city-state obviously could have no domestic routes. It was decided that if Singapore was going to survive as an international business hub an airline needed to exist, and it would only be viable if it offered a higher level of service than anybody else. Singapore Air debuted as the first carrier in Asia with hot meals and free alcoholic beverages, and their major competitors were forced to match them.10
Singapore Air bought brand-new planes, while Malaysian Airlines continued to operate the much older aircraft they already owned. They did the best they could, flying obsolete British Comet jets that had poorly designed galleys in which dishes and glassware went flying during rough weather. Even so, they served menus that included mulligatawny soup or consommé, fresh fish, beef r
ice noodles, and lamb curry. Though alcohol was served on board despite the fact that Malaysia is a Muslim country, pork products have never been served during the airline’s history.
There was plenty of pork aboard China Airlines, which was particularly interested in establishing transit business through their Taipei hub. During the days of the two-China policy, the state-owned airline was seen as an instrument of diplomacy, and their emphasis was to show off Chinese hospitality. China Airlines’ international advertising was almost exclusively centered on their food, which they marketed using the name “Dynasty Service” and the slogan “The World’s First Flying Chinese Restaurant.” A 1970 ad headlined “China Airlines to the Orient. You Can Taste The Difference” rhapsodized,
Springrolls removed from the oven at the precise moment, sweet and sour pork you could write a sonnet about. Imagine bite size pieces, lightly breaded in a tasty sauce very few chefs know how to make perfectly. And then Mandarin chicken, seasoned flawlessly, served with shimmering gold noodles.11
Like almost everything in Chinese cuisine, all the food items listed in that ad require deep-frying or stir-frying in oil at high heat, techniques that are impossible in a passenger aircraft—the reference to removing spring rolls from the oven makes it obvious that despite the appeal to tradition, this wasn’t the authentic experience. It was, however, better than what was offered by many of their competitors, and China Airlines became a major player in the transpacific market almost as soon as they entered it. These carriers and others that emphasized their heritage in their food were using the only weapon they had against entrenched Pan Am and the invasion of American carriers like United and Continental that brought the convenience of connections to and through the United States.
In the Pacific and around the world, there was probably never such a disparity of standards of service around the world than in the era between the introduction of wide-body aircraft and the beginning of deregulation in 1978. Though this was most pronounced in the international market, things changed inside the world’s largest and most regulated system too. The big double-aisle aircraft took over the most traveled routes in the United States and were just as disruptive as they were elsewhere. Within two years of its introduction, the 747 was followed into service by Douglas’s DC-10 and Lockheed’s L-1011 widebodies, and aircraft prices plummeted as all three manufacturers offered easy terms in search of market share. The result was that any carrier that wanted widebodies could get them on credit, and airlines leaped to place orders. Even PSA, a California commuter carrier that had no conceivable use for a double-deck aircraft that could hold four hundred people, ordered L-1011s before discovering that they couldn’t be operated profitably with their route structure, especially since fuel prices had recently risen.12
PSA returned the aircraft after a few months and kept doing what they did well, but other regional carriers that had ordered widebodies expanded their routes, both to get some use from the fleet they now owned and to compete with the “Big Three” network carriers—American, United, and TWA. Western Airlines, which had been a successful regional carrier centered in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, started flying to Florida in 1976 and offered full meals even on flights that left near midnight and arrived at dawn. These “Midnite Suppers” had a Caribbean theme and were inspired by the late-night buffets aboard cruise ships. A typical menu included “chicken breast with stuffed egg moutarde and garnishes, accompanied by a delicate crab salad topped with asparagus spears and featuring a papaya boat filled with pineapple and strawberries.”13 Western had similarly over-the-top menu descriptions for meals aboard their “Islander” flights to Hawaii, which also featured the “Rolling Punch Volcano,” a punch bowl on wheels with dry ice in the bottom so the liquid would bubble and smoke.
Western was a minnow compared to the Big Three, and those carriers deployed the big aircraft on medium and long-haul routes around the country. United started flying 747s to Hawaii with lavish Royal Hawaiian service in the front cabin, and a slightly modified version of the usual frozen meal in the back. On the rest of the carrier’s domestic routes, meals were highly standardized. They were made by specialized airline kitchens according to that carrier’s recipes, though some smaller lines ordered standardized meals created by food consultants. In chapter 6 of Flight Catering this system is described under the header “Food Production: The Manufacturing Process,” which is entirely apt, as making meals on this scale is best treated as an industrial process rather than one requiring culinary skills and a chef’s judgment.14
In this ad TWA did something fairly unusual—show both their first-class and coach meals alongside each other. Most carriers have always shown first-class meals even in ads that quoted coach airfares.
Rights held by American Airlines
This didn’t stop airlines from running ads claiming superior meal quality even as their food was being provided by fewer and fewer catering companies. Small, independent flight kitchens were no longer needed in the frozen meal era, and some airlines that had owned their own catering operations sold them and contracted with Marriott, Dobbs, Sky Chefs, and other operators.
In 1968 TWA decided to push the meal system to the limit and try the most ambitious promotion of the era. In order to promote the line’s international flights, they decided to start what they called “Foreign Accent Service” inside the USA. English, French, or Italian themed meals were served by stewardesses wearing disposable paper costumes designed to look like a British pub server’s dress, French gown, or Roman toga. Another design, a kind of gold lamé cocktail dress, was meant to represent New York. The meals were popular, and male passengers particularly appreciated that the dresses tore very easily and sometimes fell off. The promotion was abruptly ended when it was discovered that thanks to the inks that were used to make the paper dresses, they were extremely flammable. The airline could have kept serving the meals without the costumes, but instead reverted to serving typical fare.
Several carriers tried to lure businessmen aboard with on-board wine events, and United enlisted well-known winemakers to fly aboard their aircraft and give tastings. A sense of the party atmosphere they tried to create can be garnered from this snippet from the “Snoopin’ Around” column in the Argonaut, a Los Angeles area weekly paper:
United wants a bigger share of the LA to New York traffic and so has added live entertainment to its 8:45 AM flights, including a guitarist, a wine tasting party, and a caricaturist. The friendly skies have certainly gotten friendlier. As for you businessmen wondering whether an 8:45 AM wine party is the way to start a business trip, just consider it an educational effort. Paul Masson climbs aboard with a crew of experts who run through so many wine tips that even a gourmet wine man would be proud.15
At some point shortly after that article ran, someone at United must have wondered if carrying a guitarist, caricaturist, and team of wine experts could have possibly made any financial sense no matter how happy it made customers, given the number of seats these people used that could otherwise have been sold. The party was over as soon as those calculations were done.
By the mid-1970s, passengers had lowered their expectations about inflight meals and service. Long-time stewardesses who remembered the old days of personal service mourned the change. Virginia Riley, who flew for United from 1946 to 1989, reminisced,
In 1946, one stewardess flew on the 32-passenger DC-3, the 44-passenger DC-4 flew with two stewardesses, and we became fairly well acquainted with a passenger by the end of the flight. Nowadays the aircraft that carry two or three hundred passengers or more, like the B-747’s and the B-767’s, fly with eight or more flight attendants on duty. Flying has become another form of mass transportation with a lot of paper work.16
The most daunting paperwork was for liquor sales in flight, which in those days were handled entirely with cash and involved inventorying hundreds of little bottles of liquor and the associated mixers, as well as the prospect of making c
hange throughout the cabin. Liquor service was complicated by the fact that at any time the cart was left unattended, passing passengers were tempted to steal a bottle or two. To deal with this a caterer invented a prepackaged liquor cart that was delivered inside a canvas cover that had a plastic window top. In this way inventory could be taken without even opening the case, and when the cart wasn’t in use it was hard to steal from it. These carts, sometimes called “Speed Pacs,” made one of the last elements of the flight where stewardesses had to interact with passengers much more efficient.
The one anomaly in the world of airline catering was the “aircraft of the future,” the Concorde supersonic transport. Ironically, some aspects of the passenger experience were eerily reminiscent of flying just after World War II. The narrow aerodynamic fuselage allowed only two seats per side, just like a DC-3, and the rear galley area was tiny and cramped. Unfortunately for the crew, since the passengers had paid the highest airfare in the world, they expected food on par with the best first-class service—and it had to be served quickly, because the total time from New York to London or Paris was only three and a half hours. Since it took almost a quarter of that time to get to and descend from the fifty-six-thousand-foot cruising altitude, almost every free moment of level flight would be spent eating and drinking. The crew’s job was complicated by the fact that the aircraft had an unusual nose-up flight position, so if a server let go of a serving cart without setting the brake firmly, it rolled toward the back of the aircraft at high speed.17