Research on in-flight menu

By CAHAL MILMO

While his colleagues debated the finer points of science and the arts, Professor Peter Jones was wrestling with the hottest issue in academia - chicken korma or seafood fricassee at 35,000ft?

Britain's first full-time scholar dedicated to airline food has begun work at Surrey University to give learned advice on how the high and low cuisine served in the skies can be improved.

For decades, the bland and sometimes unidentifiable fare offered on plastic trays at breakneck pace by cabin crew to passengers with their knees rolled up to their chests has been the subject of derision.

But according to Professor Jones, an industry worth $36.7 billion worldwide every year, and which employs an estimated 100,000 people globally, is worthy of serious study.

"People generally don't understand the complexity of producing a meal while travelling six miles up at 500 mph.

"Airline catering is a highly sophisticated mixture of logistics and cuisine, but because of the circumstances in which it is served, it is considered the epitome of unappetising catering. My job is to look at ways in which that can be improved. Passengers are going to want fresher food and more choice. We have to train people in how we can provide those new standards."

Despite hiring celebrity chefs as consultants, airlines still struggle to overcome what food critic Egon Ronay said was "an insult to the palate as well as to intelligence."

But Professor Jones, who took up his post at the beginning of the year, said the airlines responsible for serving three billion meals a year are now changing their ways.

Virtually all midair meals are cooked between eight and two hours before departure and chilled to 5 deg C before being reheated on board the aircraft and served in shifts to passengers.

A long-haul aircraft will carry, on average, 42,000 catering items needed to provide up to 25 different types of meal, including economy, first-class, vegan, diabetic and kosher. To add to the problems of producing tasty food, caterers also have to battle the fact that the taste buds lose their effectiveness while flying - rendering the best beef bourguignon largely tasteless.

Airlines are looking at ways of preparing more food on board, such as bread rolls or pasta, to get away from the image of mass production, says Professor Jones.

Having flown only rarely in his previous job as Surrey's professor of hotel management, the academic would not be drawn on which airline offers the best cuisine, but said quality was generally high.

"Given the fact that hundreds of thousands of meals are provided every day, I think the standard is good. But in an increasingly food-literate society, airline food must keep up.

The International Flight Catering Association, the trade body which is providing $1.6 million over five years to finance the professorship, said health was also a major issue for airline catering managers.

Its president, William Seeman, said controversy over links between so-called "economy class syndrome" (deep vein thrombosis) and long-haul flights was one area that needed investigation.

"There is no proven link between flying and DVT but it is obviously something that needs to be looked at. The role of what we eat and drink on an aircraft should be part of that," he said.

The greatest foe in the struggle for ever tastier mid-air sustenance is, however, likely to be economic as the downward pressure on ticket prices is passed on by carriers to their caterers.

The average cost of airline food is estimated to have fallen by up to 20 per cent over five years with an average meal in economy class now costing between $6.38 and $11.15.

But according to Professor Jones, air travellers are not yet ready to forgo their love-hate relationship with those foil-covered plastic trays: "Most passengers still consider a meal as an integral part of flying. The only problem is that perhaps they sometimes don't appreciate the effort and the operation that goes into providing them."