by Richard Foss
Deregulation of US airlines in 1978 changed nearly every aspect of airline operation, including catering services. In the drive to reduce costs, food service was cut back or even removed completely. The fewer flight attendants and greater number of feeder flights made it difficult or impossible to offer food service.19
The mania for cost cutting extended to every aspect of service. United and Delta started serving Taylor Cellars wine in aluminum cans in 1981, to widespread customer disdain. The airline stayed with it, because a case of canned wine weighs only half as much as the same volume of bottled wine, and weight was as much a consideration as ever.20
Airline meals had already disappeared from short flights aboard many carriers, and in 1981 a new airline took these trends to their logical conclusion. People Express started the American equivalent of Laker Airways and charged fees for everything—fifty cents each for a can of soda, bag of peanuts, or plastic-wrapped brownie, or two dollars for a “snak pak” containing cheeses, crackers, and salami. Charging for meals was a revival of the business model that had last been used in the 1950s, but no American airline had ever charged for nonalcoholic beverages before.
People Express began as a small regional carrier but quickly grew, charging rates that were actually cheaper than the bus fare to many destinations. They were sufficiently famous in their day that they were still a pop culture reference years later; in an episode of The Simpsons, Homer reminisces about a flight in 1985 and remarks, “People Express introduced a generation of hicks to air travel.”21
After adding flights to London, Brussels, and Montreal, People Express’s management decided to try their hand at buying another airline so they could feed their international routes. They made a giant mistake when they chose Frontier Airlines, which had previously offered premium service. A Frontier stewardess named Stephanie Knowles remembered,
All the food service disappeared and we had to sell a prepackaged snack box for $3.50 if a passenger wanted to eat. We sold coffee, tea, and soft drinks for 50 cents each, coffee refills were free. We had to keep track of the inventory, and flight attendants got a percentage of sales at the end of the flight. At the beginning inventory we got so many sleeves of cups, soft drinks, and snack boxes and at the end of the flight everything had to balance. It made a lot of paperwork, and we had to work more days to get our 85 hours of flying (monthly minimum). It was almost a relief when Frontier went out of business in 1986.22
The lost investment on Frontier had cost People Express so much money that the weakened company was sold for almost nothing to Continental the next year. It had been a case study of the perils of merging full-service carriers into no-frills carriers, and served as a cautionary tale for others.
The pressure from new entrants to the market weighed most heavily on the carriers that had high fixed costs like terminals in major airports, labor contracts negotiated during more optimistic times, and large numbers of retirees who were owed pensions. These carriers had to sell assets to survive, and one of the most valuable assets some carriers had was their flight catering operations. These were profitable and easily separable from the carrier in ways that other parts of the airline weren’t, and so they went on the auction block. American Airlines, which operated flight kitchens exclusively for their own services under the name Sky Chefs, sold theirs in 1986 to a Canadian firm called Onex, who eventually sold the company to Lufthansa, which still owns it.
Airlines that had no large assets to sell resorted to a strategy that could best be called go big or go broke. Braniff Airways, which had operated successfully from the United States to South America, expanded recklessly to Europe and Asia and flamed out in 1982. Eastern Airlines, long the butt of jokes for their service, had some success in establishing themselves as a premium-quality airline. In 1985 they introduced Golden Wings service to London, featuring some of the best food in the air. When other carriers were cutting back even in first class, they served seven-course meals in the front cabin, including caviar, lobster, and standing rib roast. Business class was served on china with linens, and even in economy they offered all passengers hot towels, a choice of entrées, and other amenities. It wasn’t enough, and the airline went bankrupt less than a year later, but they went out in style.
The deregulation years prompted many changes in airline service, unfortunately all toward service of lower-quality food, and less of it. For the first time since food started being served in flight, not a single technique to improve it was developed in over a decade. If one had even been discovered it probably wouldn’t have been adopted unless it promised lower costs. There would be a brief resurgence of interest in providing a good experience before things got even worse.
chapter 17
Designing the Flying Meal
All airlines want to reinforce their branding with every aspect of their service, and in the era when carriers owned their own kitchens and handled their own catering, this was easily done. Major carriers could easily have their own branded china, glasses, and silverware because it all stayed within the same system—there was no concern that a United aircraft might accidentally have a meal delivered on TWA china because they had entirely separate operations.
Smaller carriers that outsourced all their catering to an outside service and couldn’t afford the signature china had to be satisfied with using branded napkins and placemats and supplying the outside kitchens with signature recipes. This is far more cost effective but has had notorious failures when caterers prepared foods for palates very different from their own. Britannia Airways, an English airline that specialized in budget tour groups, found this out when they started running flights to Florida and provided recipes to their American caterer for the return flights. As related in Gourmet and Glamour in the Sky,
The Catering Manager at the time, Ms. Jenny Groom, recalls having great difficulty in obtaining authentic dishes that would be acceptable to the very British clientele that they carried. At one point she visited sausage factories to make sure a suitable British style “banger” was produced in the English style. In the late eighties at Orlando in Florida the catering Manager at Dobbs catering confided to me that Ms. Groom had been back three times to ensure the apple crumble was perfect and on the third occasion “. . . it was still not quite right!”1
If Brittania had this kind of problem when catering for a British working-class clientele, one can imagine what it is like for airlines whose national cuisine has a highly stylized presentation. A Japan Air Lines representative declined to provide details but stated that the carrier has had difficulty at times finding overseas chefs who can make sushi rolls and donburi rice bowls that come up to the standard of beauty that is suitable for their first-class cabin. Beauty is important because, as Michael Dick, international account manager for Marriott Inflight Services, observed in 1977, “You start to eat with your eyes.” As the person who was interviewing him at the time, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, noted,
Unfortunately, though, it’s your stomach, and not your eyes, that makes the final judgment. So who’s to blame for that wilted salad, cold dinner roll, burnt peas, soggy dessert, or tough piece of mystery meat drenched in a sauce that resembles Gravy Train? The obvious answer would be the chef, of course. But with the airlines themselves “dictating” the menus and setting up very rigid guidelines the role of the chef in airline catering is quite different from that of his counterpart in the restaurant business.”2
Airline catering has diverged further from restaurant cooking since that was written, and further from the airline business too. When Don Magarell started United’s catering division in the 1930s, he was an airline employee and could get quick feedback from stewardesses who worked for the same company he did. Once centralized kitchens making frozen food became standard in the business, a meal might be consumed two thousand miles from where it was prepared and two months later. If airline passengers disliked that meal, the cabin crew that served it would have to f
ill out paperwork to send to managers who would contact the catering company. Fast and meaningful feedback is now impossible.
This points out an essential change in relationships: for the airline-owned caterers, the passenger was the customer who had to be pleased; for outside caterers, the airline is the customer. Passengers care most about quality, while airlines care most about price.
The only remaining link to fresh food aboard airlines is in first class, and it’s natural that the food there will be more varied because airlines charge so much more and want to project a premium experience. There is another reason that the food in the economy section is so different from the food up front: the airlines assume that many coach passengers wouldn’t like the food in first class if they tried it. In an article for Delicious Magazine, Danny Chapman, the development chef for Superior Foods, a UK-based caterer, said,
For economy, it’s basic flavours which the majority of consumers will like. The starter will either be a simple leaf salad or a simple dish like red pesto penne pasta with shaved Parmesan. The main meal will be predominately based around chicken (roast chicken, potatoes and vegetables), beef (beef lasagne) or vegetarian (roast Mediterranean ratatouille and for dessert a simple fruit salad with orange and passion fruit syrup). Most economy meals are served in a tray format.
For Business and First Class passengers we study the current food trends and what new ingredients are in the market; a current dish is roasted vegetables on a bed of quinoa, and pomegranate salad topped with bar-marked goat’s cheese.3
The British passengers from the 1970s who wanted their bangers and apple crumble just as they had it at home might nod their heads in agreement, but sophisticated airline passengers on a budget might wish it were otherwise. They’re not likely to get their wish, because a meal that is bland or dull is still edible to someone who likes exotic food, while one that is highly spiced or original would be rejected by someone who has simple tastes.
So who makes the decision about what meals fit the flavor profile of the typical customer? In the same article, Chapman detailed the process:
Once the meals have been developed, they will be presented to the airline for assessment. Some of the airlines choose to send their meals to a Food Jury made up of everyday people, who will taste and evaluate the choices. Depending on the feedback, the meals will be either tested for nutritional information and shelf life (both microbiologically and organoleptically) or reworked to meet the customers’ and consumers’ standards. Once all the technical information comes back and we have final customer approval the menu will then be launched with the airline.
For those who are about to head for a dictionary to look up organoleptically, it means “involving the use of the sense organs.” Somehow it fits the stereotype of airline catering that the company’s representative couldn’t just say that the meal should be tasty.
Regardless, it appears that anyone who wishes to improve the variety of airline meals should get themselves into a “food jury.” Even in a world that is increasingly multicultural, the definition of “everyday people” implies a fondness for the bland and familiar. Most of the airline food of earlier eras was based on the idea that airline passengers were dining on nothing much more adventurous than pot roast and fried chicken when at home. These days curries, Thai food, and Mexican cuisine are some of the most popular dining experiences in the world, but unless you’re traveling on an airline from one of those countries, you won’t be seeing those meals aloft anytime soon. Airline meals are stuck in an earlier era and are likely to keep serving your grandmother’s comfort food.
chapter 18
The Decline and Fall of Inflight Dining (1985–Present)
The 1990s dawned in an environment in which food in economy class on most major routes was being served less often, in smaller quantities, and by fewer people. There was, however, a large section of the globe in which it was becoming better: the former communist bloc. Aeroflot started operating Ilyushin-96 aircraft in 1989, their first aircraft with a galley that was almost as sophisticated as American and European airliners. And for the first time, the food loaded into that galley in Russia was up to international standards as well, since a Soviet-American consortium had started a catering company called Aeromar at Moscow’s airport.1 The Soviet Union was in a slow-motion disintegration, and for many Russian travelers, this was one of the first benefits of opening to the West. In 1992 the airline received Airbus planes, the first they ever owned with coffeemakers on board, so they could finally ditch the awful instant coffee they had been serving since the foundation of the airline.
Standards had already been rising among some other Eastern European airlines, particularly Malev Hungarian Airlines, which had been using American-built aircraft for some time. Others did not make improvements as quickly—the author remembers a flight from Sofia to London aboard Balkan Bulgarian Airlines in the early 1980s on which meals were served with such rapidity that they were almost thrown on trays, after which the stewardesses retired to the back of the cabin and were not seen again for some time. The passengers had a lively debate about what kind of meat was beneath the lumpy, tasteless gravy, and when the stewardesses returned to pick up the trays, they claimed they didn’t know.
As standards rose in the east, they fell in the west. Most of the new European private carriers cut costs with fanatical zeal. Ireland’s Ryanair has been the most famous at this, charging passengers for meals and almost everything else; at one time the airline even floated a proposal for installing pay toilets on board.2 Most competing carriers didn’t charge for meals but served a regimen known as “salads out and sandwiches home” regardless of the time or duration of the flight. One airline executive, Errol Cossey of fledgling carrier Air Europe, realized that there was a fundamental flaw in this strategy.
Back in 1979 the airports did not start to get busy until around 0900 hrs, so to get our slots and the sort of aircraft utilisation I was after without impinging on night slots, we had to start our day with departures at 0700–0730. This meant that if we were going to provide salads and sandwiches they would have to be prepared—and prepared fresh—which meant the caterers would have to pay premium rates (that they passed onto us) for getting the meals ready in the middle of the night in order to hit our departure times!
I looked at the situation and discovered that no matter what time the holidaymakers left home and travelled to their destination, they passed through a mealtime. I reasoned that the only time during that journey that they were worry-free was when they were sitting on the aeroplane—so that was the time when they would best appreciate food. I wanted to create a feeling that you were having a meal in a restaurant rather then being thrown a packet of sustenance. This way perhaps people’s minds would be diverted from the high density seating.
. . . We could serve a hot English breakfast—sausage, bacon, scrambled egg, mushrooms and sautéed potatoes for less than roast lamb, so the order was to serve breakfast on all flights that vaguely touched breakfast time. . . . These meals costed out less than the labour intensive salads and sandwiches, due to them being factory produced well in advance during conventional working hours and then frozen. . . . It was also much easier to control quality. Due to the meals being frozen we could quite safely cater for the return sector by carrying the inbound food from the UK in the hold. This was far safer, and quality control was much easier, than relying on continental kitchens that had to gear up for high peak summer-only demand. When all the benefits were put together, we could provide a meal—starter, hot entree, pudding, cheese and biscuits and a chocolate—considerably cheaper than the limp “Spam Salad” that was being served by our competitors.3
The British carrier that rose to international prominence at this time based much of its appeal on the high quality of inflight food and service. Virgin Atlantic was an outgrowth of record company entrepreneur Richard Branson’s business empire, and from the carrier’s founding in 1986 the
airline used his credibility and the branding of his company to appeal to affluent younger travelers.4 An ad from April 1988 explicitly aimed at college students compared flying other carriers to taking a trigonometry exam with a hangover, but boasted that aboard Virgin,
How about a nice hot meal? In fact, a choice of three nice hot meals. That’s right, it’s airline food. With one major difference. It’s actually edible. It’s also followed by tea and pastries later on. So you can munch out while you do a little extra studying. (Yeah, right!)5
It was the first instance of an airline making a pitch to a hip demographic, and it was wildly successful. The airline served unusual snacks like Worcestershire sauce–flavored pretzels in economy class, and even there served meals with flair on their red and white china. Naturally, when Virgin Cola was introduced in 1994, that was served as well. Business class was more lavish and continued the deliberately quirky branding, most famously with the airplane-shaped salt and pepper shakers with the words “Nicked From Virgin Atlantic” embossed on each one. They were the first carrier to introduce meals-on-demand in business class, rather than serving when it was convenient for the crew.6 The company won Business Traveler Magazine’s award for best business-class service in 1988, only two years after it was founded, and has won that award almost every year since, along with others for best food and inflight service.7 Virgin Atlantic flew their millionth passenger only three years after the carrier was founded and has gone on to spawn a network that serves much of the world. It was a rare example of an airline betting on passengers appreciating quality service and winning.
There weren’t many others. Asian carriers like Singapore Air, ANA, and Cathay Pacific kept standards high wherever they flew, but elsewhere cost-cutting was the mantra. The Gulf War of 1990–1991 caused tourists to cancel trips by the thousands, and even first-class business was affected as multinational companies restricted business travel.8 Seats went empty at the same time that gas prices soared, and airlines all over the world suffered record losses. Air Europe, which had just expanded their fleet and was entirely devoted to recreational tourism, was one of the casualties.