Once food was the only entertainment in flight, but today instead of food, a maximum of entertainment is offered.
The very nature of air travel, as well as the design of the aircraft and the need to adapt it to high altitudes, makes the process of preparing food much more complicated. Being at altitude involves certain technical limitations, which make it much easier to reheat ready-made food rather than try to cook something from scratch, especially given that the cabin air is compressed.
Although planes typically fly at an altitude of about 12 km, the pressure can be considered comfortable only when the aircraft is at an altitude of two to three kilometers above sea level. However, even at such relatively low altitudes, cooking time increases significantly. "At these altitudes, it is really very difficult to cook," explains John Hansman, who heads the International Center for Air Transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Usually the food is just reheated."
But it's not just about the difficulty of cooking. Such in-flight meals are more convenient in many ways. Among various hot dishes, airlines prefer pre-cut reheated meat, usually generously covered with sauce – for example, beef bourguignon. Partly the sauce is needed to moisten the dry compressed air in the cabin. In addition, both the sauce and the long reheating time make the food softer, which is very important given that nowadays on planes, table knives are either not sharpened or are completely absent. "Airlines realized that if the meat is pre-cut, a knife is almost unnecessary," says Guillaume de Syon, a professor at Albright College in Pennsylvania, USA, who studies the history of technology, especially aviation.
However, the main issue is the lack of space on the plane. Larger planes mean more passengers and less attention to individual orders.
Today, passenger aircraft are designed to accommodate more than 300 passengers. It is assumed that they all eat at roughly the same time. However, de Syon notes that until the 1960s, when air travel had not yet become so hugely popular, the average number of passengers did not exceed 50, and flight attendants had enough time to accommodate each passenger's preferences. The hot meal menus of those times would probably seem too generous to modern travelers. For example, they used to offer a made-to-order omelet or a piece of meat that was cut right in front of you.
But now flight attendants have to serve not dozens but hundreds of people, and they simply do not have enough time to assemble a separate set of products for each. To manage serving everyone, they have to distribute pre-prepared containers. The huge selection of dishes offered to passengers on planes in the 60s and 70s is now almost nowhere to be found. But this does not mean that menus have disappeared completely. They have simply been replaced by a different kind of menu.
Over the past decade, the number of entertainment options offered to passengers on a typical airliner has increased many times over, leading to changes in seat and cabin design. Passengers are offered music, often Wi-Fi, and most importantly, a huge selection of movies and TV programs that can be watched on individual screens embedded in the seats, rather than on a large screen at the front of the cabin. Thanks to the installation of individual screens, passengers pay less attention to how they are fed on board, which has allowed airlines to cut costs on food and spend more money on entertainment for travelers.
"So why are we fed semi-finished products?" asks de Syon. "Airlines definitely pay more attention to keeping passengers from getting bored. Until the 1990s, you could only watch one movie – that's it. But then came the understanding that if passengers have choices, they will be more satisfied and patient," he says.
Obviously, technology has come a long way since the beginning of commercial air travel. However, the changes that previously led to the appearance of hot meals on board may ultimately lead to their disappearance.
In the early days of air travel, planes did not have powerful engines capable of producing enough energy to heat food. This meant that passengers in most cases had to eat what could be packed in boxes on the ground. Usually it was sandwiches or cold snacks. Then the size of aircraft began to increase, and their design began to include functional galleys, thereby paving the way for the hot meals we are served today.
Initially, many companies, to stand out from competitors, offered large portions and better quality food. But today, the main factor of competition is ticket price, and therefore, by refusing to provide meals on several flights, a company can increase its profit or set a slightly more advantageous price compared to competitors.
"Today, airlines are redistributing their costs and leaving the choice to consumers," says Bob van der Linden, curator of exhibitions on air transportation at the National Air and Space Museum in the USA. "That's how the market works. It's economics, and nothing more. After deregulation in 1978, airlines can compete as they wish. As it turned out, the best means of competition is a low price," he explains.
In their quest to cut costs, airlines no longer offer passengers dishes that they usually don't even finish. Nevertheless, an even better way to increase profit might be to completely abandon the galley on board. Instead, you could install a couple more seats.
"In an effort to reduce ticket prices, many airlines have attempted to increase the number of seats on planes. This is partly why many of them do not offer hot meals – it allows them to make the kitchen smaller and add a few more seats," notes Hansman. According to him, airlines try to use every centimeter of free space on board and therefore even reduce the size of tray tables.
However, reducing the space allocated for food preparation and consumption does not mean that in-flight meals will disappear entirely. In search of new ways to cut budgets and save space, airlines are again resorting to the same cold snacks and sandwiches prepared on the ground, which began in-flight meals several decades ago.
"We are returning to boxed meals, which started in the US in the late 1930s and early 1940s. This is food that is easy to transport and does not contain perishable products – essentially a box lunch or dry ration," says van der Linden. "You could say we've come full circle."