Whats The Deal With Airline Food

The mating call of the hack StandUpComic?, or so it used to be.

Bobby Wheat: [runs onstage] Hey! How's everybody doin'? Welcome to "Stand-Up & Win", where stand-ups compete for big money! Contestants - thanks for makin' it! Are you ready to play? [the three stand-up contestants sound their eagerness] Okay! Hands on buzzers, here's our opening question: "What's the Deal with Airplane Food?" [Billy buzzes in] Billy!

Billy: I know! Could this stuff taste any worse? It's, like, "Thanks, but no thanks. I'm still stuffed from that huge bag of smoked almonds!"

Bobby Wheat: That's correct, Billy! That's worth $100! And control of our board! Okay, let's take a look at our categories! They are: Airplanes; Breakfast Cereals; Commercials; Chicken McNuggets; 7-11 Employees; and Gilligan's Island. Okay, Billy, what'll it be?

What I found most enjoyable about this SaturdayNightLive? skit was that Jerry Seinfeld was the host, and the other actors were all doing bad impressions of Jerry Seinfeld. -- KrisJohnson

This expression uttered right after "Is anyone here from out of town?" causes a chorus of drunken yelps...

I tend to use this phrase when a conversation is drifting into the realm of the over-discussed and screechingly-obvious, for example, when someone mentions how crash-prone Windows is.

What's the deal with StandUpComic?s, anyway?

ButSerious?:

I don't know. Most of it isn't that bad considering the difficulties of cooking for thousands of people cheaply. It's the small portions that get me :-0

That's likely due to weight and space considerations, for one. Of further consideration is the difficulty of cooking at such a high altitude and low pressure; it's no wonder airlines have lately concentrated on salads, muffins, cold-cut sandwiches, peanuts, cookies, etc. Meat is good, but on a plane, other things can be done better. I also like it when airlines give you a snack bag before boarding, so as to avoid the whole beverage cart conundrum.

No-one cooks at high altitude and low pressure. Everything is precooked on the ground and microwaved/reheated just before serving. Microwaves aren't allowed on airplanes.

Diverse clients: The airline can't make it too spicy, too salty, or anything else that someone might object to.

Unless you're flying in a part of the world where everyone likes spicy food. The "asian vegetarian" meals on Emirates are pretty good.

I flew a couple of years ago on an Alitalia flight to Hong Kong, followed by an Air China flight inland. The Italians made fantastic black coffee but served the tea with milk and sugar already in (eech!). The Chinese served fantastic tea but served the coffee with the milk already in... also, try SwissAir?. They give you Toblerone chocolate. -- BrianEwins

If you're looking for an airline with good coffee, try Austrian. Excellent. -- MikeSmith

Lufthansa do good food. German food seems well suited to being served on aircraft - lots of cold meats, sausage, cheese and salads.

I took a flight to Corsica once, and they served what looked like war rations of the French Foreign Legion. They were tin cans of shredded beef head or something like that. As usual, I ate everything - what else can you do? -- AndrewQueisser

In the US, Northwest Express has excellent food (for an airline); real plates, even. Reportedly, they used to be part of a large company, and exclusively for its employees, but were spun off. -- DanielKnapp

But what about the airlines that have stopped serving peanuts? Someone told me that it was due to people being allergic to peanuts, but if those people were allergic, then why were they eating them? Plus the new snack crap you get now on airlines like Delta have peanuts in them.

Some peoples' reaction to peanuts is so severe that having other people on the plane eating them would trigger an attack. Though in that case I have no idea about other peanut-containing snacks or why the airlines would be risking them.

I think the removal of peanuts was more for cutting costs than for those allergic to peanuts. I've been on airlines that still serve peanuts.

Why not just let these people die? It's not like MotherNature? would miss them, or anything, seeing as she already clearly has it in for them. And another thing: fundamentalist christians who get fertility treatment and then have all seven fetii because "God wants then to have them". Earth to fundie: God doesn't want you to have any babies: that's why he made you infertile in the first place.

On top of all this, why do some airlines still have to use that stupid aisle cart. I think the best system I've seen was a flight on Jet Blue. They came to everybody and wrote down each order and then came back with a tray of the items ordered. Why block the aisle for a half an hour with a cart?

The captain goes on the comm and asks everyone to stay in their seats, and everyone ignores him, so the the stewardpeople enforce it with the carts. It's just crowd control.

That makes a lot of sense. I guess I should just piss on the stewardpeople.

Extra points if you are a female doing this.

I like the idea of snacks instead of (attempts at) formal meals. Trying to have a flying restaurant is a dumb idea. Just have lots of snacks such as nuts, donuts, pretzels, corn-chips, pop-corn, V8 juice, etc. Sure, it ain't the most healthy, but its a plane for god sakes, not Veggie Club.

Except for commuter plane hops, a lot of flights extend across meal times. It simply makes sense for the airline to provide meals rather than have people carry on pizzas and buckets of chicken. Also, on a long flight, picking at airline food is a welcome diversion.

Well, the food may be terrible, but at least you can get VeryGoodSeats.