Passengers’ day nosedives without airplane food
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Of all the things I miss about the good old days of air travel - the right to keep on your shoes, the freedom to arrive at the airport less than 10 hours before flight time - the perk I miss most is reliably terrible airplane food. Yeah, I always regretted my choice - darn, I should have gotten the chicken - but we passengers were all in culinary misery together. Except for the first class fliers, of course, but at least the security curtain between the cabins kept their gourmet fare out of our faces.
But now that the cost-cutting carriers have instituted the BYO system, you can spend an entire flight coveting your seatmate’s chicken marsala and tiramisu while you starve to death, feebly kicking yourself for passing up the to-go options in the terminal. Sure, you weren’t hungry then, and anyway, the airline has to serve something. Yeah, right.
The seatbelt light dings off, and suddenly you’re awash in a sea of crinkling sandwich wrappers and popping Tupperware. And if the hunger pangs don’t get you, the turbulence might. Rather, it might get to the Portuguese fisherman’s soup your annoying seatmate is slurping, ignoring the pilot’s ‘‘bumpy air” announcement.
And have I mentioned the olfactory issues?
Or, as one recent flier put it: ‘‘I’ve been turned off Chinese food for a long, long time.” Bad General Gau’s? Not at all. A flier a few rows away busted open a particularly pungent order of moo goo gai pan. ‘‘She was using chopsticks, not a fork, and she really took her time,” the former flier reported.
Hmmm. Maybe the airlines should introduce seating by cuisine. The sushi section could be in front, heavy garlic meals in the back where the smokers used to be, and no one with spaghetti and meatballs in an emergency exit.
Speaking of crises, this BYO trend has the potential to devolve into ‘‘Lord of the Flies” territory. Remember those stories of planes having to wait hours on the tarmac because of de-icing problems or whatever? Imagine if you will: A cabin full of peeved passengers, the hours pass, the tummies rumble. And someone in 12A has a chicken sandwich. It could get ugly.
Who would think we’d miss the old Salisbury steak with limp green beans and an iced dessert square?
