The question is simple: is it reasonable to for airlines to limit the kind of food you can bring onboard when most are unwilling to serve food (or offer it for purchase) onboard?
Do Airlines Want Us To Starve? Airlines Limit Food Onboard
The context of my question is flying on SAS, which does not currently serve food on flights within Europe but has the following onboard food policy:
You are allowed to bring light snacks and non-alcoholic beverages on board SAS flights. Examples of light snacks include a chocolate bar, a sandwich or similar. When eating the light snack, you may remove the required face mask, as long as it is put on again as soon as you are done. Meals such as salads or take-away food are not allowed to bring onboard.
We have implemented these measures to limit the contact associated with handling waste from consumption of food and beverages onboard.
I think the smelly food issue is a red herring. Let’s assume that pungent fast-food like a hamburger dripping in sauce with French Fries or an Indian curry is inappropriate onboard. But salad? Or pasta in a light sauce? Or perhaps a chicken breast drizzled in pesto sauce?
And isn’t the definition of a sandwich broad to enough to encompass many messy and smelly things, like the aforementioned hamburgers?
SAS claims this ban is to limit contract associated with disposal of waste. That’s not unreasonable, but don’t sandwiches and chocolate bars have wrappers as well? Could this be part of the wider move by SAS to be environmentally conscious and limit plastic and paper waste? And what if you just forced passengers who bring food with them onboard to leave with that food?
As much as I detest a seatamate with a stinky meal, what about the person who gets to the airport late to minimize wait time but may not have eaten all day?
CONCLUSION
Perhaps on a SAS flight, in which flight time is generally under two hours, this is less of a problem. But I’m uncomfortable with the notion that airlines won’t serve you a complimentary meal, won’t even sell you food, but also won’t allow you to bring food onboard. Even in this pandemic era, we don’t need to reduce air transport to flying prisons.
Much ado about nothing or reasonable point? Should airlines ban food altogether onboard during this time?
image: TWA
I imagine SAS will say a firm “No!” to durian and natto 🙂
Incidentally, is the little boy so delighted because his gaze has fallen on the cup of coffee?!
I flew JFK-MXP a couple years ago and was seated on Premium Economy. There was a group of maybe 8 friends that were seated all over Premium Economy and Coach and they brought onboard several bags of Buffalo Wild Wings that they bought at the airport prior to the flight. As soon as plane reached the altitude they could remove their seat belts they all stood up and started dividing the meals. Now, if you haven’t been to a Buffalo Wild Wings I can only summarize as greasy, stinky and spice chicken wings with all sorts of sauces. Suddenly the entire plane was smelling greasy chicken and since they were passing the trays to each other so they could all try different things the entire place was disgusting. They had tons of paper napkins and you could see sauce dripping on their trays, seats, floor. Once they finished they had tons and tons of trash to dispose. FA came with several plastic bags to get their trash. For the duration of the flight they kept walking to the bathroom and drinking water like no tomorrow.
Now you tell me if that is something that should be allowed on a plane.
I love B-Dub’s. I would have probably tried to join in.
I have experienced the passengers with smelly food, and even smelly passengers. But enough already!! I say we drag loads of food on board until they get off their cheap, lazy asses and serve meals. Many airlines have used the fasten seatbelt during an entire flight to get out of a simple drink service, now Covid is the new excuse. Send in a complaint after every flight that there was no food available. If they are too cheap and lazy maybe they can go to self service galleys with vending machines.
I’ll see your “person who gets to the airport late to minimize wait time but may not have eaten all day” and raise you a “person who is on the third flight of the day, has optimistically had 33 minutes between legs to get from gate to gate across sprawling hub airports, and has just enough time to grab a three-piece with red beans and rice from Popeyes in Terminal C before that last flight home.”
There’s a legitimate case to be made that flying is a little more dangerous when people are taking off their masks to eat and drink, and minimizing that is good. There’s a legitimate case to be made that handling takeout meal waste presents a negligible but non-zero risk to flight attendants.
But flight attendants have long worn disposable plastic gloves while collecting trash after a meal service or towards the end of flights, and flight attendants are wearing masks while working now. People need to be able to eat and drink over the course of the day, and staying hydrated to minimize susceptibility to airborne pathogens is more important now than ever.
Last I checked they served food in prisons. 😉
Touché.
I always pack my own “Snack Pack” when I fly, some granola bars, little candy bars and what not because you just never know. All pre-packaged sort of stuff with (hopefully) minimal aroma. Of course, as we well know many travelers are selfish and thoughtless of others and may bring their limburger and sardine sandwiches on board without a care for anyone else. Very much a grey area but it only takes one or two idiots to ruin it for everyone else.
If you’re going to take the stance that masks are the only thing that will save us, then sorry, no exceptions. Not even for drinking water.
Use a straw. Otherwisee this all smacks of political theater. You won’t starve without food for a couple hours. You can last weeks without food actually. If you can’t take this minor inconvenience then don’t fly right now. What is up with this constant mask shaming, then turning around and demanding exception after exception when it suits you?
I am not a mask shamer, though I think they are useful. Perhaps you confused me with Lucky?
Triggered much snowflake? This post didn’t really have much to do w/masks you know.
Relax bro. It’s obvious your in a catch 22. While you say masks won’t help, the number of senators of the party you ostensibly support (we know you just support Trump like the little dictator lover you are) who caugh the virus from an event has now confused you. An event where they were maskless
This is confusing to me because sandwiches are take out food.
It would be more clear cut to me if food that had strong odors or were very messy to eat were excluded but I am not sure how to write such rule other than to specifically mention durian.
Right…aren’t sandwiches take-out? Very vague.
I need more info. Does this policy apply on long halls? I believe that on a long hall flight this policy is incredibly inappropriate. However, on a short hall flight, I’m not quite as sure about that.
•You don’t need food on a transcontinental flight. It’s too short. You will be a little hungry. Deal with it. We’re in a pandemic.
•However, to suggest that you shouldn’t be ALLOWED to bring it is a bit of a stretch.
My biggest reason why I’m in favor of not implementing this policy is that people can do whatever they want, or dispose of the waist themselves. Flight attendants don’t have to do it, the garbage can be your responsibility. They’re being a bit too strict. But I’m not going to not fly them because of it, unless that extends to long halls.
I enjoyed the TWA picture – I vividly remember getting hot meals on flights from MKE-STL in the 80s.
I had a nice meal in F on BA LHR/AMS which is barely an hour, and the FAs slipped us 8 minis of Piper Heidsieck. But that was then.
You can go several days without eating. Just drink yr water. Maybe add a little salt. I’ve done it. You’ll be hungry but fine. And a little lighter. Our distant ancestors went days without food until Og made a kill.
I’d be in favor of banning bring-aboard food. The resulting mess and stink is disgusting esp. when kids are involved. You and your sprogs don’t need hourly snacks unless medical reasons.
If you pay for first/biz, yes you should get a nice meal and fancy boozes, but otherwise just let me sleep.
They’ll love my kimchi.
I wonder if they’ve cut back on catering services at outstation airports and are having galley trash removed only at major hub stations. Salad and takeaway containers take up a large amount of space in the trash carts and bins; sandwich wrappers and chocolate wrappers do not.
I’m all for everybody bringing onboard anything they want to eat.
How do you force people to take their food or residual trash with them when they leave? We currently have very little leverage on what people do at departure as they are all rushing off, both because the carrots and sticks are few and the staff have other responsibilities to consider or probably want to leave expediently, too. The most I can think of is banning them from future flights, which seems extreme for leaving trash.
The rule of thumb should be: no animal products ( they stink) and nothing plant-based with a pungent smell. I can’t see why airlines need to offer anything more than snacks like celery sticks, carrots, nuts, protein bars, some bread and crackers, maybe some dips . No one is going to die because they didn’t get a steak dinner on a plane
Passengers should be welcome, indeed encouraged, to bring their own inoffensive items
People are clueless. I have seen many people opening Chinese and Indian food from the airport which we all know is not real food since they are fast food. It stinks so bad!!! Others bring salads with raw onions and very strong dressings that nauseates the entire plane. Your rule of thumb makes total sense but the problem is that there is no way to check what people are bringing before we are at 30,000 ft.
Don’t most if not all LCCs have a similar rule in place (even pre-COVID)?