When the food takes flight

MUMBAI: My mother visited me recently and when I went to the airport to pick her up I found her looking vaguely miffed. ���Jet Airways must be in a really bad shape,��� she told me. ���Can you believe, we had to pay for our food? And it wasn���t even a budget airline!��� She said she���d had a chicken sandwich and it was decent, but she felt sorry for the air crew who had to manage (a) informing passengers that food had to be paid for, (b) telling them about the options, and (c) handling the cash.

It���s doubtless tough on kids who thought they���d be escaping Barista jobs to find themselves doing the same up in the air. But my mother was unfair on Jet. The airline, like all carriers, is hardly in the best shape, but the paid meal was not a sign of that, but an attempt to find a solution. Without realising it she had booked herself on Jet Airways Konnect, their new semi-budget service, which offers most of the usual Jet experience, just minus the
���free��� meals.

Whether this will be enough to make Jet profitable, I don���t know. There���s a much quoted figure about the airline business worldwide spending $40 billion on meals, but I still find it hard to believe that cutting reheated portions of puri-bhaji is going to make that much difference. It seems a somewhat symbolic gesture and it���s actually one I rather welcome. Because it might open the way to make airline eating really interesting again. I���m talking, please note, of Economy/Coach food.

Airlines love doing stories about how they���re getting top chefs to design their menus, and how well they score on surveys like a recent Esquire one which lauded Jet for serving popcorn on their international flights to go with their special entertainment menu. But all this is in first class or business, and while many ET readers will be flying that, most of us will be going Economy when we���re paying our own way (and even when our companies are, these days).

When airlines first started serving food, their model seemed simple ��� copy the trains which were their main competition. Guillaume de Syon, an American historian who has researched airline food, says that Air Union, a precursor of Air France, simply got railway caterers to produce similar food. And they found that nervous passengers, most of them flying for the first time, welcomed the food for reasons more than just being hungry: ���The need to pass time and experience something in common while in the air means that... passengers actually look forward to the dining event,��� writes de Syon.

This was enough to make meals standard on planes and the first dedicated flight kitchen was set up by United Airlines in 1936. The problem really started when planes started flying higher and pressurised cabins became standard from the 1950s onwards. Pressurisation curtailed kitchen operations and also affected the taste of food, by dehydrating our tastebuds and making them less receptive. Cold cabin temperatures also ensured food cooled fast. The range that could be served reduced, yet passengers were harder to please.

As it happens the 1950s also marked Air India���s ascent of as one of the world���s best airlines. It���s hard for us to imagine this, as we follow our national carrier���s desperate attempts to stay aloft, but it really was seen as such then, and its food was an important part of it. ���Even the Economy food was good, just simpler versions of First Class food,��� recalls a friend who was in cabin crew at that time. It probably helped that Indian food was discovered to be the one cuisine that stood up to pressurisation quite well.

Much Indian food anyway tastes better made ahead and reheated, lukewarm is the usual temperature we eat at (so it doesn���t burn our hands) and spiciness compensates for the deadened tastebuds. Air India flights like its London-New York hop became popular both for the low fare and the curry that was served. And despite all its problems, its worth noting that Air India has retained its reputation for food. AirlineMeals.net, a website that obsessively, and mostly critically, tracks airline food, has a soft spot for Air India, with much appreciative comments in particular for its ���deep fried curried breaded prawns��� and Alphonso mangoes (not in Economy, obviously).

This legacy is something Air India in particular, and Indian airlines in general can build on. Now that they���re charging anyway, why offer boring sandwiches when they could be selling local specialities from each place (undhyoo from Ahmedabad, biriani from Hyderabad, etc) which we could book when we book our tickets? Microwaves mean that they just need to be popped in onboard and heated (we could give the cabin crew tips). Departure lounges should have really good food stalls which will pack for onboard travel ��� something that���s already cropping up in American airports.

Of course, there���s the simpler option of just bringing food from home, which budget airlines faced when they started. Many first time travellers, especially older ones, treated the planes like trains and brought along tiffin boxes. Security problems with liquids cramped their style, but I���m betting Jet Konnect will be seeing a resurgence of parathas and sukhe bhaji or idlis coated with gingelly oil and mullagapodi. Which is where my last idea comes in.

The only problem with home food is that it���s boring, and most of us do look on airline food as a way to indulge in things we wouldn���t normally allow ourselves. What can we do, we say, as we spread extra butter on our rolls, there was no choice so we had to eat this! So why not use this desire for novelty and indulgence by tying up with food companies to try their new products out on this captive test group?

In return for accepting free food passengers would have to fill in detailed questionnaires, which would be a fun way to pass the time. They get fed, airlines get paid by the researchers and food companies get feedback and exposure with exactly the sort of modern customer base they seek. If nothing else it should ensure that my mother has more fun the next time she flies!