Why isn’t the food on our airlines better?

It’s not a story that Air India tells about itself though perhaps that could be because everyone who remembers it has probably left the airline.

But, in the 1960s and for much of the 1970s Air India operated a London to New York service every day.

 

At that time the trans-Atlantic route was the most competitive in the world and European and American Airlines would slug it out for supremacy. Despite this, Air India, a small airline from a country that had no significant aviation tradition, managed to make a mark.

 

   The big global carriers tried to figure out what Air India was doing right. They discovered that its on-time performance could not match say, PanAm’s.

 

   It couldn’t be the fares because in that era, the airline cartel IATA forced everyone to charge exactly the same fare. The planes were the same too, mostly bought from Boeing.

 

   After careful study they came to the conclusion that it could be the sense of seeming exotic: the era of the great South East Asian carriers had yet to arrive and Air India was regarded in much the same way as Singapore Airlines is today.

 

   But mostly it was because of the food. This was a time when all airlines served European food. Even Japan Airlines, the best known of the Asian carriers served Western food. A JAL menu from 1966 would be packed with such dishes as Chicken Gallantine with Glazed Carrots. There were no Japanese dishes on offer.

 

   Research showed that passengers enjoyed Air India’s Indian food much more than the European food that the American and British airlines were serving.

 

   The obvious conclusion was that passengers liked food that was different. But was it as simple as that?

 

   Air India’s success led airlines to finally research what kind of food tasted best at 35000 feet. They already knew that it was difficult to cook at that height. As far back as 1939 Don Magarel of United Airlines, a legendary figure in airline catering, had noted that at 5000 feet in the air it took six minutes not three to boil an egg. Coffee packed in a thermos flask expanded at that height and could blow the top of the flask off.

 

   But nobody had bothered to find out how food actually tasted at high altitudes. The Air India example - in those days the inflight food on Air India was far tastier than the food on PanAm, BOAC or even Air France- led other airlines to research the subject. (Unlike today, where inflight food is outsourced many airlines did their own catering in the 1960s and 1970s.)

 

"Given these advantages and given that Air India used to be the airline whose success forced Western carriers to re-examine their catering, why isn’t the food on our airlines better?"

   They came to the conclusion that food cooked at sea level tastes very different at 35000 feet. There were various reasons for this. Our sense of smell is reduced by at least 30 per cent at 35000 feet. And smell is the key to taste. All airplane cabins dehydrate the palate which means that our sense of taste is affected even more.

 

   This can have dramatic consequences because perceptions of sweetness and saltiness are much reduced.

 

   In 1973, in an effort to get around this problem, France’s UTA airline hired Raymond Olivier, the chef at the three Michelin star Le Grand Vefour in Paris to make its food more altitude-friendly. Olivier changed all the recipes adding more salt, sugar, butter and cream. The change was dramatic and widely commented on.

 

   In Germany LSG a catering giant discovered that European spices could hardly be discerned at heights and reformulated its recipes to make the food more spice-forward. Ernst Derenthal of LSG even told The Wall Street Journal that all airline food would get better if they only served Indian curries on board ‘but the passengers may not let us.’

 

   The problem with all of this research was that while it was commissioned in fits of enthusiasm very little actually changed For instance Heston Blumenthal did a TV show with British Airways demonstrating that umami flavours survived high altitudes so if the inflight meals had a higher umami content they would taste better. The show had a huge impact on viewers but in the long run nothing changed.

 

   Most experts in inflight catering will tell you that devising meals for Indian planes is the easiest thing in the world. If you make a gravy dish you get around the texture problems you face with say, steaks or other cuts of protein. The spices awaken the palate. And for variety there is always the so-called Oriental option with umami flavours.

 

   Given these advantages and given that Air India used to be the airline whose success forced Western carriers to re-examine their catering, why isn’t the food on our airlines better?

 

   Some of this has to with scale. When a flight kitchen turns out thousands of meals, quality is bound to suffer. Then there is the delay factor. Meals are made several hours before and inexpertly reheated in basic ovens before service. As the comedienne Joan Rivers used to say ‘the average aircraft is 16 years old and so is the average airline meal.’

 

   But mostly it is that airlines don’t care about food any longer. There are exceptions— Qantas, Emirates, Singapore etc-but they are in a tiny minority. If you look at airline ads from 3O years ago, many of them featured the food served on board. Nobody does that any longer. Nor do many of today’s airlines even make a special effort with business class passengers. On Air India, the presentation may be different but everyone in every cabin eats food of the same basic quality. The menus may read better in the front of the aircraft but the food tastes the same. I don’t think Indigo even has ovens for reheating food on many of its aircraft, because catering has never been its priority.

 

   The emphasis is on cost. Managers are told the story of Robert Crandall the Chairman of American Airlines who made huge savings for the airline by removing one olive from every salad. The story has since been debunked but it is still told at management schools as example of great managerial skills.

 

   When the emphasis is on spending less on passengers so that you make higher profits, what do you expect? Can it be an accident that even as passengers complain about airline food, many flight caterers make huge profits?

 

   Today’s airlines get you from place A to place B (well, mostly) and really don’t give a damn about what you eat along the way.

 

   It could be different. The Crandall-olive story has a counterpoint. In 2008 an angry passenger wrote a bitter but brilliantly sarcastic letter to Richard Branson about how bad the food on a Virgin flight from India to London was. Most airlines would have let a chat bot or a flack respond. But Branson replied personally. Virgin made the letter public. And the disgruntled passenger was invited to the flight kitchen to talk to the chefs and suggest menu changes.

 

   It could have been a PR disaster. Virgin turned it into a triumph. And the food did get better.

 

   But to do things like that you need a boss with Brandon’s flair, talent and concern for passengers.