For several days, Delta Air Lines has suspended hot meals on over 200 flights out of Detroit (DTW), blaming a “food safety issue.” Aviation insider JonNYC is reporting that a listeria outbreak is to blame.
Delta Air Lines Shifts To Panera Bread, Other Alternative Meals in DTW After Suspected Listera Outbreak
On Sunday, Delta disclosed that a kitchen was “notified” of a food safety issue, prompting an immediate shutdown:
“During a recent inspection at a DTW kitchen, Delta’s catering partner was notified of a food safety issue within the facility. Delta and its catering partner immediately shut down hot food production and subsequently suspended all activity from the facility. Hot food and other onboard provisioning will be managed from other facilities.”
A memo to flight attendants blamed the issue on “an unforeseen supply chain issue.”
Yes, it is not wrong to blame the issue on a supply chain issue and food safety issue, but that is sort of like blaming the storm on the weather. While Delta has not revealed specifics, it appears a listeria outbreak is to blame.
Per JonNYC, that “issue” was a listeria outbreak, evidenced by an entire flight crew that fell sick on a Friday flight from Detroit to Amsterdam (AMS).
None of this confirmed by me, but FWIW pic.twitter.com/BT53OMLyyV
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) October 14, 2024
There’s no list of routes impacted because Delta is implementing several stop-gap measures, including double-catering at other facilities and catering boxed meals from Panera Bread onboard. On some flights, passengers have been offered SkyMiles or airport meal vouchers in lieu of meals.
Recall that over the summer, another Delta flight from Detroit to Amsterdam was forced to divert after passengers discovered the chicken served onboard was spoiled.
> Read More: It’s Pasta Or Pasta On Delta Air Lines After Other Meals Contaminated By Mold
CONCLUSION
Delta catering out of Detroit will be irregular as a suspected listeria issue is sorted out. Expect boxed lunches from Panera Bread or simply vouchers to purchase meals inside the terminal.
When United faced a similar outbreak at its partner’s Denver catering facility, it took many months to sort it out. Hopefully, Delta will solve this problem quickly.
images: reddit // hat tip: View From The Wing
Yet another shining example of the premiumosity of this premium airline.
@Chi … +1 for “premiumosity” . Good one .
Flew Dallas to Detroit last night in first. Flight was catered in Detroit for the round-trip to and from Dallas. While they had hot meals, the choices didn’t align with what was specified for those who pre-ordered. And, interestingly, no snacks and no wine from the bottle that is normally served in first-class. They only had canned economy wines.
Confession: I work as a food safety auditor. I’ve been involved with food safety for over 35 years. Ever since the Boar’s Head listeria outbreak earlier this year (and it couldn’t happen to a nicer company), there’s been heightened awareness on fully-cooked food facilities and their environmental monitoring programs. As a former USDA meat inspector, I’m surprised to say that USDA does a good job with cooked meat products in mandating severe environmental monitoring, including product testing, and that’s how Boar’s Head was caught.
The fact is that the places that prepare airline meals are normally in older buildings, which have a susceptibility to pathogenic growth. Everything there is done to a cost, and this includes sanitation. I don’t audit these facilities, but they’re, shall we say, not the best when it comes to control measures that would mitigate against this.
I had a ramp agent in Atlanta whose legal name was Listeria Champagne. Maybe she transferred?
I am somewhat surprised because Do&Co is supposed to be better than the regular airline catering companies (LSG and GateGourmet), I guess they are truly no better.
I thought listeria would not survive oven temperatures. So if the food was reheated properly the hot meals should be safe and salads would have been a greater risk. Unfortunately we learn something new every day.
Yeah but you can’t rely on proper cooking by the end user as the fail safe.
Makes sense and good point
Panera is an upgrade to the junk airlines serve.
Cold Panera boxes is better than most DL hot meals in domestic. This is ironically an upgrade, fight me
Hell, if ATL did a promo where all meals were catered by Chick-Fil-A or Zaxby’s (both GA based) I wouldn’t be mad at all.
I agree that, in so many cases, I’d be happier with something like this. I could think of other simple restaurants’ food that could be good. I don’t think you realize what a cabin full of fried chicken would smell like.
I’m perfectly willing to give Delta grief when they make one of their innumerable bad decisions but I have to give them props on this one for 1) choosing not to food poison passengers and 2) give passengers something to eat.
There was a listeria outbreak at a ready-to-eat meat supplier in Oklahoma that’s hit pretty much every supermarket chain in the country. Perhaps it’s related to that? If so, I doubt the disruption lasts all that long, as they’ll just need to get re-stocked.
As others have noted, the great irony here is that the replacement meals arguably represent an upgrade. Panera’s boxed lunches are usually half decent as far as boxed lunches go.