Air Travel
Eating on the fly
Better than anyone, flight attendants know the nightmare that is airline food.
On Nov. 23, moments before a Northwest Airlines jet was scheduled to depart Las Vegas for Detroit, the captain let his belly get the best of him. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the pilot was upset because his “special meal” had not been delivered. “He got off the plane, he walked by a number of food establishments that were open and serving, he got into a cab and went off-site,” said Northwest spokesman Jon Austin. While searching for a meal that would please his palate, the finicky flyboy managed to delay Flight 1194 for more than an hour.
It took less than two weeks for airline management to terminate the captain. Like the special meal he so desperately desired, his 22-year flying career was consumed, digested, flushed down the toilet and forgotten.
Though such reactions are rare, food — or the lack thereof — is as volatile an issue for crew members as it is for airline passengers. Some union contracts require that airlines provide on-board meals for pilots. At Delta Airlines, where pilots have no such provision, the company recently announced a voluntary program to spend $3 million to $5 million for cockpit crew meals on flights where food is served.
Flight attendants at most carriers have no such luck: Unless we happen to be working on a long-haul international flight, there’s usually no food designated for cabin crew. And during long, multileg flight sequences, when flight attendants are on duty for up to 14 hours and quick connections require sprints from plane to gate to plane to gate, three, four, sometimes five times a day, there simply isn’t time to eat on the ground. Often, there’s not enough time to stand in line for a takeaway quarter pounder at an airport McDonald’s. When time is short and hunger opens a crater in a crew member’s stomach, we rely on the old standby: leftover airplane food.
After the passenger meal service has been completed, flight attendants often gather in the first-class galley. We don’t just come here to chat, however. When we disappear into the galley, we mean business. Like vultures hovering over the half-eaten corpse of a wildebeest, we lick our beaks, lusting for an appetizer or a dinner roll, hoping to snare some leftover meat — all the while praying that our comrades are on a diet. If there aren’t enough entrees for the entire crew, someone might make a halfhearted offer: “Wanna split this with me?”
“Oh, no, no … that’s OK,” a polite, starving colleague might respond. “I’ll see if there’s any food left in coach.” But the good folks at airline catering have gotten much better at matching the number of entrees to the number of passengers. After all, it’s the catering company that ends up paying for extra meals. If every passenger decides to eat, and the plane has been stocked with the appropriate number of meals, the main-cabin galley ovens should always end up empty. So will the stomachs of luckless crew members who fail to bring food from home.
Packing your lunch before setting off for work is no big deal if you’re working at an office or a construction site. You make a sandwich or wrap up the previous evening’s pasta and you’re in business. But for flight attendants, especially those of us who work three- and four-day trips, it’s difficult to pack food for the duration.
Still, I’ve flown with co-workers who lug their own food through six countries in three days. Inside their special bags, you’ll invariably find the potato, the perfect food for crew members on the go. It’s healthy, durable and can be heated up in the galley oven. Homemade lasagna, sandwiches, bags of fruit, Tupperware containers filled with pasta or tuna salad — these are favorites of the polyester jet set.
Trouble is, the U.S. Customs Service won’t always allow food into the country. Even if the food is prepared in Texas that morning, once you get on a plane and fly to, say, Central America and back, the very same food is subject to importation restrictions. Many a flight attendant is guilty of smuggling food past narrow-eyed customs officials.
Don’t think for a minute that flight attendants aren’t sensitive to passengers’ concerns about airplane food. Few travelers understand the problem better than we do. We’ve heard the complaints two or three thousand times. We know the portions are too small. We know the chicken is sometimes as bland as petrified tofu. Like you, we question whether that paltry piece of in-flight steak/gristle actually comes from a cow. During short-haul domestic flights, we’re embarrassed when we have to say “I’m sorry, but there’s no meal service. All we’ve got are peanuts and drinks.”
If it were up to flight attendants, every main-cabin passenger would dine on lobster, prime rib or the very best vegetarian creations. We want you to be well fed. Well-fed passengers are happy passengers. And happy passengers make our job much easier. Besides, we get your leftovers.
After listing to our grumbling stomachs for years, my airline began providing flight attendants with snacks. Delivered in individual plastic bags, the snacks are catered on certain flight sequences that make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to grab lunch or dinner. The company calls the bag of goodies a “Snack Attack.” Or maybe it’s a “Snack Pack” or “Snack in a Sack.” Or some cutesy moniker hatched in the brain of an airline executive who wouldn’t dream of eating this stuff.
Inside the bag there’s usually a main course. Sometimes it’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Other times it’s a carton of just-add-hot-water vegetable soup. The broth is drinkable, but the vegetables taste like morsels of soggy cardboard. The main course is accompanied by an apple or orange, and maybe a couple of crackers. Cookies too: in short, everything flight attendants need to get through a 14-hour day.
Elliott Neal Hester has been a flight attendant for 15 years. He has also written for National Geographic Traveler, Men's Fitness, Glamour, Maxim and Caribbean Travel & Life. Out of the Blue appears every other Friday. E-mail your tale of life in the sky to Hester. For more columns by Hester, visit his column archive. More Elliott Neal Hester.
Behind the underwear bomb
The latest airplane terror plot wouldn't have been foiled without airport security -- but not the kind we all know
Travelers line up at a TSA checkpoint at Los Angeles International Airport.
(Credit: Reuters/Danny Moloshok) Another deadly plot taken down in the planning stages. This time, thanks to the work of a CIA double agent, officials were able to infiltrate a Yemen-based al-Qaida plot to destroy a U.S.-bound jetliner using a nearly undetectable underwear bomb.The moral of the story: Airport security works!Am I being facetious? Not necessarily. It depends on your definition of airport security.
In my mind, the key to keeping airplanes safe is, and always has been, stopping acts of sabotage while they are still in the planning stages. Here in the age of the TSA checkpoint, with its toothpaste confiscations and obsession with pointy objects, we tend not to think this way, preoccupied instead with a kind of airport Kabuki — the tedious, fanatical screening of passengers and their carry-ons. Real airport security takes place offstage, as it were. It is the job of the folks at the CIA and the FBI, working together with foreign authorities. And while TSA has an important role here too, we can do without the spectacle of airport guards rifling through innocent people’s bags in a pathological hunt for what are effectively harmless items.
Continue Reading ClosePatrick Smith is an airline pilot. More Patrick Smith.
How the rich took over airport security
Security checks were one of America's most democratic places -- until rich passengers got their own speedy lines
(Credit: Reuters/Salon) The other day at Bergstrom Airport in Austin, Texas, I witnessed a striking manifestation of the new American plutocracy. Along with getting a photo at the Department of Motor Vehicles and sitting in a jury pool, standing in line at airport security with a mob of other people, miserable though it is, remains one of the few examples of civic equality in our increasingly oligarchic republic. Much airport security, of course, is theater, designed to provide alibis for bureaucrats and politicians in the event of a terrorist attack. But while we can debate what a rational airport security system would look like, no rational system would discriminate among passengers on the basis of ability to pay.
Continue Reading CloseMichael Lind’s new book, "Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States", will be published in April and can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com. More Michael Lind.
When parents drug their kids
Antihistamines can knock out even the loudest child on a plane. Is it safe -- or just bad parenting?
(Credit: Ilya Andriyanov and KAMONRAT via Shutterstock) When I wrote last week about the 2-year-old girl who, along with her whole family, was kicked off a JetBlue flight for having a tantrum, I expected an outpouring of responses. What I hadn’t imagined was how much of it would be in favor of sedating kids as a practical means of getting them from point A to point B. “You know how I traveled with toddlers?” the stay-at-home mother of two tweeted to me. “Benadryl. Works like a charm.”
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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.
When a flight becomes “pre-schoolers gone wild”
A family with toddlers is ejected from a JetBlue plane -- and kicks up a storm about kids and travel
(Credit: Kenneth Man via Shutterstock) Very few venues in this world — especially ones that invlove confined spaces — are thrilled to welcome a 2-year-old. Unless you’re at a Wiggles reunion show, the most common response is a lot of rolled eyes, anticipatory grimacing and the question “Can we change our seats?” So when JetBlue staff noticed young Natalie Vieau boarding a flight from Turks and Caicos with her parents and her 3-year-old sister last month, it’s possible they were already steeling themselves for Natalie to behave exactly like, well, a 2-year-old. When young Miss Vieau complied, pitching a fit that would have made Chris Brown proud, the crew kicked her and her family off the plane. Discuss.
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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.
The things I carry
All those gadgets, chargers, adapters and cords are supposed to make my life easier. I'm not so sure
(Credit: Patrick Smith) The scourges of modern-day air travel.
I can think of a few: TSA, delayed flights, garbage in your seat pocket. Screaming kids and misdirected luggage. “CNN Airport News.”
Or, how about the blizzard of cardboard placards that hotel chains insist on littering their rooms with? I spend a quarter of my life in hotel rooms, and I resent having to spend the first five minutes of every stay gathering up an armful of this diabolical detritus and heaving it into a corner where it belongs. Attention, innkeepers: This is fundamentally bad business. One’s first moments in a hotel room should be relaxing. The room itself should impart a sense of welcome. It shouldn’t put you to work.
Continue Reading ClosePatrick Smith is an airline pilot. More Patrick Smith.
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