Airline travellers prefer soaring with chicken

By STUART DYE

As airlines cut back on food in their efforts to offer cheap fares on the transtasman route, a survey shows New Zealanders like their in-flight food, with chicken the most popular choice.

A poll of Flight Centre customers found that nearly half of all respondents preferred chicken, compared with just 21 per cent who liked beef.

Salad and fish were the least popular options, preferred by just 12.8 and 11.2 per cent of the respondents respectively.

But some were not that fussy about what they were served and 4.8 per cent said they did not have a view and were happy with what they were given by the airline.

More than 600 customers of the Flight Centre took part in the survey, in which they were asked about their airline food preferences.

Chicken was the leading choice for both sexes, but when it came to the other options, the results were poles apart, with more women than men preferring salad.

Air New Zealand and Qantas' new fare structures for travel to Australia offer snacks instead of a full in-flight meal. Pacific Blue, when it starts operating in February from Christchurch to Brisbane, will not provide food at all.

A survey in Britain by airline information company Sita found that 20 per cent of people said they would not use an airline again if its food did not come up to scratch.

It found 51 per cent of those surveyed could remember what they had eaten on flights up to 12 months earlier.