American Airlines flight attendants were placed in an absurd situation earlier this week when they had to prepare meals and beverages in “near-total darkness” on a longhaul transatlantic flight because the airline dispatched a Boeing 777 aircraft with broken galley lights.
American Airlines Flight Attendants Forced To Prepare Meals In The Dark On London-Los Angeles Flight
On Saturday, February 14, 2026, American Airlines Flight 137 from London Heathrow (LHR) to Los Angeles (LAX) was dispatched with non-functioning galley lights, leaving cabin crew to improvise with emergency flashlights while preparing and serving meals and drinks. According to a video shared on View From The Wing, flight attendants were juggling trays and utensils in near darkness as passengers waited for service across the Atlantic.
The problem is not that AA broke any safety regulations or put passengers in danger (beyond potentially mis-plating meals). Indeed, AA may have made the right call in deciding that it was more costly to take a delay at Heathrow than to defer this annoying but ultimately minuscule maintenance issue.
Minimum Equipment List (MEL) procedures allow for the safe, legal operation of aircraft with specific inoperative components for a limited time. When equipment fails, it must be logged, checked against the operator’s FAA-approved MEL, and if authorized, deactivated/placarded by maintenance. For example, that’s why we often see these stickers on seats or in lavatories:
And I certainly understand that logic. Fixing the galley may have taken 10 minutes…or it may have taken 10 hours. Better to get the flight into LAX, a hub for AA, on-time and figure it out there rather than at an outstation in London where UK261 (big compensation for these type of delays) would apply.
There has been no official response from American Airlines yet on why the flight was sent in this condition, but again…it makes sense. And if it was AA137, that flight leaves at 11:50 am and arrives at 3:20 pm (in other words, the entire flight is during daylight). Based on the video, though, it would not surprise me if this was AA135 instead, which leaves at 4:55 pm and arrives at 8:25 pm (in this time of year, that means the flight would operate almost totally in darkness).
But it is also sad these type of stories typically, or least anecdotally, are about American Airlines. It’s not that Delta Air Lines or United Airlines do not have broken equipment (in fact, the picture above is from United), but it just seems, at least these days, a lot more likely to be on AA. That’s something the carrier is working to address…but it must do more and it must do it faster.
CONCLUSION
Any flight, but especially a longhaul international flight should theoretically never leave the ground without basic cabin systems like galley lighting in working order. That American Airlines did so and expected the crew to soldier on with flashlights may have been the pragmatic solution, but was still not ideal.
The crew deserves credit for handling an awkward circumstance professionally, but AA must ensure any avoidable service failures do not occur by engaging in more preemptive maintenance. I’ve been on so many AA flights the last year with broken seats or screens that I find it hard to believe that this was a foreseen accident versus a maintenance issue that may have been overlooked.
Complete and total darkness? What is this, the cabin on a 2h domestic flight in the USA departing at noon?