The Qantas Flights Where You Should Bring Your Own Food

When you book an international flight with Qantas, you’d normally expect to get a full meal and drinks. After all, Qantas is a full-service carrier and its prices very much reflect that. But that’s not the case on every route.

I recently flew with Qantas on its weekly service from Brisbane to Koror, Palau. During the flight, one of the flight attendants came through the Economy cabin to individually warn every passenger who would be flying back from Koror to Brisbane with Qantas to bring extra food.

This flight attendant was encouraging people to have a proper breakfast at their hotel before the flight, and to bring extra snacks. She said that people often complained about the lack of food on the Koror-Brisbane sector, and she felt it was best to warn people so they could plan ahead.

About half an hour later, a different cabin crew member came through Economy Class holding a tray. On the tray was an apple, a small muesli bar, soy crisps, and a couple of other packaged snacks similar to what you see in this AFF post. He showed the contents of the tray to each passenger, saying “this is all you get on the return flight back to Brisbane, so please eat before you get on!”

This was good initiative from the crew

I’ve never seen this before. While I found it almost comical, I commend the cabin crew for doing it. They were friendly about it and clearly trying to make life easier for whichever crew would be operating the following week’s Palau trip!

There’s no lounge available to Qantas passengers in Koror, and check-in for the Koror-Brisbane flight currently closes at 7.30am.

For what it’s worth, there is a small paid lounge near the departure gate (entry costs USD49 at the door), but it only has snacks and drinks available. The airport café in Koror’s terminal has only a limited range of food like packaged lollies, chocolates, noodles and Asian-style soups. Plus lots of different types of bubble tea, for some reason.

So, if your hotel in Palau doesn’t start serving breakfast until 7am and you don’t bring your own food, you could end up being very hungry by the time you land in Brisbane at 3.25pm. I can understand why the crew felt it appropriate to warn everyone!

Qantas has to double-cater its Palau flights

So, what’s going on here?

In fairness, this situation isn’t really Qantas’ fault. The reason for the poor catering on the Koror-Brisbane service is that there are insufficient catering facilities available at Palau’s international airport. Therefore, Qantas needs to load all the catering needed for this flight in Brisbane.

It’s not that uncommon for airlines to “double-cater” flights, as this is known in the industry. But there are a couple of extra complications with this particular service. Firstly, there’s limited storage space on the Boeing 737. Secondly, the aircraft lacks chillers to keep food cold for an extended period – and the return flight departs 25 hours after the catering is loaded in Brisbane.

Airlines can use dry ice to keep food cold for several hours. But 25 hours is just too long, so all the food served on the Koror-Brisbane flight has to be food that doesn’t need to be kept cold. That’s why the food consists mainly of ambient snacks.

Sadly, the food served in Business Class isn’t much better. It, too, can’t be anything that needs refrigerating. So, on these kinds of flights it’s typically just a bowl of soup, bread and a selection of packaged snacks. Qantas advertises the meal served on this flight as “breakfast”, which I think is a bit of a stretch.

For what it’s worth, I did get a hot meal on the outbound flight from Brisbane to Koror in Economy. However, there were no extra accompaniments like bread or a dessert, and I was pretty hungry towards the end of that flight. Qantas didn’t load any spirits or sparkling wine either, but beer and a choice of red or white wine were available. You get better catering when flying Qantas to New Zealand, which is half the distance.

Other Qantas international flights with limited food

Qantas flights departing from Tonga and Samoa face a similar problem, as there are no catering facilities available there either. Therefore, you might want to eat beforehand and bring extra snacks if you’re flying on any of the following routes – even if you’re in Business Class:

• QF144 from Apia to Auckland (launching in June 2026)
• QF166 from Koror to Brisbane
• QF190 from Nuku’alofa to Sydney
• QF198 from Apia to Brisbane

Just be mindful that you might not be able to bring your food through Australian customs at the end of the flight, depending on what it is.