Airline catering: delays and cook-chill

[Melburnian1]

Airlines, like all modes of transport, are subject to delays.

One example on 21 April 2017 was that QF9, the 2255 hours from MEL to DXB and LHR was altered to depart at a predicted 0115 hours on Saturday 22.

That's fine as QF catering could cope with that, and merely load the truck a couple of hours later given that QF had hours notice of the intended delay.

Unfortunately the delay then blew out to an expected 1730 hours tonight - almost 19 hours late. 'Engineering' (maintenance) was apparently the reason.

In these circumstances would the food prepared using the cook-chill method for all classes be brought back to the catering centre and stored in the freezers (or elsewhere for the drinks and other items not subject to degradation) prior to again making the journey on the specially equipped scissor-lift vehicle to the A388 aircraft or would the catering staff have to discard all the food (at huge cost to the airline) and laboriously prepare, cook and chill every meal again? I have read that cook-chill allows meals to be stored for up to five days in either all or most cases.

 

[I love to travel]

What an interesting question, but don't know the answer sorry

 

[Melburnian1]

One thing I omitted to mention above was that the different departure time may mean the type of meals required might vary from the original schedule, given that (at 18 or 19 hours late) it in the sense of catering departed at dinner time rather than 'late night supper' time.

 

[SuzieQ68]

Great question. Would love to know the answer to this one.....

 

[Melburnian1]

Food safety has to be top of the list, but the reason I asked it is that it's an enormous waste (apart from the cost) to dispose of good food (well, at least in F and J!) prepared at a high total cost. So I'm hoping the answer is that the food can be taken back, stored in freezers and then later placed on such delayed flights.

 

[Himeno]

A lot would depend on what the food items are, how it is stored and the temperatures and times involved.

For example, at work, chilled products (eg perishables, meat, deli, produce, seafood) have to be stored under 5c and can be out of refrigeration for 30 minutes at a time. If somethings happened (eg, fridge breakdown), the temp can go above the 5c, but must be back under that within 3 hours and must be dumped if it goes above 20c at any point.
Cooked food (such as bbq chickens) have to be cooked to a certain temp in the oven and then be maintained above 60c and be sold within 4 hours of being removed from the oven. The deli used to be able to sell chilled bbq chickens after that 4 hour period, but the method required to chill them was too time consuming and needed too much space in the cool room that few stores bothered (had to get the temp down from 60c to under 5 within a set time period which required a set amount of room per chicken in the cool room for air flow)

So, if the caterers know about the delay and keep the food within the required time limits and temperatures, they can reuse the food for the delayed flight. However, if it has been kept out for too long, such as being loaded on the flight, which then takes a long delay you could get problems. Especially for high risk foods like chicken or fish.

 

[eric2011]

I thought I read somewhere that QF give un-used food to a food bank company that helps out the homeless etc. (yellow trucks, & I think they're I think called Food Harvest)

 

[milehighclub]

I think each delay would be taken on a case by case basis. But in my experience, I have had the same catering for a flight that left the next morning instead of the evening before.

This meant dinner for an morning flight. Logistically, catering will generally always be the same. It wouldn't be possible to prepare breakfast for example in that amount of time and neither MEL or SYD have economy main meal catering prepared onsite.

Youd be able to source some items though that would be appropriate like bakery items etc . This was the case on our flight and we served the main a little later after tea and coffee with bakery first.

When I've had a morning departure from LAX because of a delay, we have simply reversed the service, so breakfast first and then supper. The benefit of two service flights is that you can pretty much swap the service around and serve appropriate meals to the time of day.