When flying, would you eat the food in Coach, Business or First Class?

GadgetGuy

GadgetGuy

(Formerly Shermie)
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Back in the day, food service in all 3 classes of the plane were good.
The only difference was that alcoholic drinks were not complimentary in coach class.

But you had the time of your life flying in either class of service! It was grand, fine & dandy!!

Nowadays, you're lucky enough to get anything in coach at all!! I don't fly any more. Not that I'm afraid to, but it is mainly the all that stuff at the airports that they make you go through to get on a plane!

And since 09-11-01, airlines have cut back on food in coach. It is mainly buy on board for coach class passengers. And it's always JUNK food!! They are also charging for every little thing - even for carry-ons, which they've never done before! :mad:
 
I flew for a while after 09-11, but the food service stunk, and so has getting through the airports to get on a plane! :mad::headshake::stop:
 
I used to fly a lot in my line of work - not so much these days - and my experience was the variability in quality was entirely by airline. I'm afraid, none of the American airlines were very good - and I can immediately appease that assertion by saying, British Airways was never up to much either. I recall being on a long haul flight with KLM and at some ungodly hour, we were all offered, I kid you not, Pot Noodles. One airline that always had a big reputation for its food was Singapore Airlines. And these days it is the Middle Eastern - Emirates, Qatar those airlines that are consistently the best - actually in every respect.

Many years ago - what I'm talking late 1980s early 1990s, there was an Aer Lingus flight from Copenhagen to Dublin that stopped at Manchester, that many of my colleagues liked to catch because the food was excellent, and the drink was plentiful. The result was that colleagues flying from diverse parts of the world would find themselves unexpectedly meeting up on Copenhagen airport on the same final flight home. Which all lead to an incident of some considerable legend within the company. Two sales guys were returning from somewhere having wangled themselves Business class tickets. And who should they bump into at the departure gate but the MD, holding a tourist class ticket.
 
Back in 1983, one could get free peanuts and free drinks on one airline, but they only had one type of seat. Oh wait it was free drinks on day flights. Evening flights you had to find someone to buy the drinks.
Note: same airline still does free bags.
 
It depends on how long the flight is. If it's only an hour or two, I wouldn't bother. If I'm going to be stuck on a plane for several hours, I'll risk the food.
 
The last time I flew was 2008 (Thai Airways - Jakarta - Bangkok). It was an evening flight so I didn't even bother with the food, only the wine. In fact, I rarely bothered with the food before that even on 10 hour long hauls - except possibly the cheese and biscuits.

In this neck of the woods both on long haul and short haul (5 hours) all the booze is still free and continuously available (I think). The exceptions are the budget airlines where you pay a minimal fare and everything else is extra! A friend of mine recently even had to pay for wheel chair assistance!

Like others here have implied, I don't relish flying again. When I worked for a living It appeared that I was off the ground for 25% of the time and I really got tired of it.
 
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To add. An exception was back in the early 80's when we were flying Malaga to Manchester with Air 2000 (a British Airways budget subsidiary). The "meal" was shepherds pie and it was excellent - I even asked for another which I received and ate.
 
Ken Natton said:
Many years ago - what I'm talking late 1980s early 1990s, there was an Aer Lingus flight from Copenhagen to Dublin that stopped at Manchester....
Click to expand...

I was flying Al Italia from Linate to Manchester in the late 80's. I arrived early at the airport (early finish to the meeting) and noticed that there was an earlier Air Lingus flight to Dublin which stopped at Manchester. I asked the desk to change my flight to that one thereby saving a couple of hours in the airport. "No, I'm sorry" she said "That flight doesn't go to Manchester". Thinking that it may have been a language problem I gesticulated to the flight display where it definitely showed "Linate - Manchester - Dublin". "Ah" she said, "It does land at Manchester but only to pick up passengers, not to drop them off."

I discovered later that only Al Italia and British Airways had an agreement to fly passengers to and from the two airports. No wonder the flights were expensive.

Anyway, the thread is about airline food. I found the food in Linate very good albeit only sandwiches and cakes.
 
If they give it to me, I'll pick at whatever it is just to pass the time. I don't like to drink on flights because by the time you're comfortably numb, it's time to do the mad dash to the luggage, and then the car rental, and so on.
 
Has anyone tried the trick where you order a Kosher meal when booking your flights because it's supposed to be better?
 
I never eat anything from the airline when I fly. Make sure I eat before, pack some food in my carry on....I can only imaging how far in advance that food was prepared. Not to mention the astronomical cost for crapola...
 
I haven't been on a commercial flight since 1975 when I flew from Heathrow to Dublin. We didn't get any food at all, not even snacks, and the other flights were only to European destinations and we didn't get meals on them either. I did however work at a hospital in the late 1990s/early 2000s where all the cooked food was supplied by one of the same firms who supply airlines. It was absolutely disgusting. We used to take our own sandwiches or heat our food in the occupational therapy kitchens (really for seeing how elderly patients could cope at home when they were about to be discharged!).

Better meals were forthcoming on the ferries between England and France or England and Belgium. The best food I've ever had was on one of the old trainferry ships which used to travel between Dover and Dunkerque/Dunkirk up until the 1980s.
 
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