Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 13, 1993 TAG: 9301120294
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM INCANTALUPO NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
AIRLINES AIM TO SERVE A BETTER FARE
One of the top 10 ways to annoy an airline flight attendant, David Letterman once claimed, is to ask whether the Salisbury steak can be used as a flotation device.Airline meals get dumped on almost as much as New Jersey, by comedians and passengers - sometimes unfairly and sometimes for good reason. But the airlines are trying to change that.
One by one over the past two years, most airlines have redesigned their menus, trying to improve what they serve aloft and also, not incidentally, to reduce the cost of it, which totals about $1 billion a year industrywide.
In some cases, that means no meal when you expected one or a cold one instead of a hot one, which costs more to prepare and store. To save money, some carriers are eliminating meals on shorter flights, usually those under two hours that are airborne between normal meal times.
Some are reducing the variety of entrees available and making seemingly inconsequential labor-saving changes that can add up to big money - like serving melon in crescent-shaped slices rather than in cubes or curls.
On some routes, eliminating meals saves not only the cost of raw food and its preparation, but might allow the airline to reduce the number of attendants on a flight, says Andrew Nocella of Avmark Inc., an aviation consulting firm in Virginia. "If you're going to serve food to 150 passengers," he says, "you need more flight attendants than are required by the [Federal Aviation Administration] for safety."
To make their food more appealing to an increasingly health-conscious public, the airlines are making meals lighter and more nutritious, eliminating things like breaded meats and sauces and other cholesterol-laden fare.
American Airlines, the nation's largest carrier, on Monday introduced an all-new menu - representing, it says, the most complete overhaul in its history. It was done, American says, under the guidance of a panel of chefs from top-drawer restaurants.
No. 2 United overhauled its domestic program last June and its international menu last November. The new overseas menu, says United, features more grains, vegetables, legumes and pastas. "Lighter sauces and glazes that enhance flavors instead of masking them will also be emphasized," its announcement said.
Not all the menu changes are aimed at promoting healthier eating, but they are all designed to win friends.
American's new menu substitutes chateaubriand for filet mignon on first-class dinner flights. Passengers on some flights will be offered deep-dish pizza made at a well-known pizzeria in Chicago. And United offers a boxed McDonald's cheeseburger on certain flights if passengers reserve them in advance.
American, which says it serves 180,000 meals and snacks and 156,000 soft drinks in the air each day, says it's not removing food from any flights. But United says it has eliminated meals from some flights of under 800 miles that don't coincide with normal meal times. TWA announced last June that it would eliminate meals on flights of less than 549 miles.
Behind the effort to cut costs are staggering losses at most major carriers - the result of the recession and of fare wars. The industry lost an estimated $7.5 billion in the past three years.
Like leg room and the interior decor of planes and airport waiting lounges, food has been a marketing tool for the airlines for decades. Lee Howard, an expert with the consulting firm Airline Economics Inc. in Washington, says the culinary wars began in earnest during the 1960s as airlines scrambled to fill an increased number of seats that came with the introduction of jet aircraft.
"We're constantly looking for some differentiation because, essentially, we're all flying the same planes and leaving at the same times," says TWA spokesman Jerry Cosley.
For all the talk - and jokes - about it, experts say food ranks quite low in importance among passengers. Stan Plog, whose Reseda, Calif., company, Plog Research, does customer survey work for airlines, says business travelers rank seating comfort as most important, followed by a convenient schedule, on-time performance, the existence of a frequent-flier program and, finally, amenities like food.
For leisure travelers, Plog says, ticket price is most important and food is hardly a factor at all in the choice of an airline. "Almost never does the question of food come up," he says. Most people, he thinks, have low expectations about airline food.
But, Plog says, the media, especially travel writers, pay a lot of attention to an airline's food and bad publicity about it can hurt.
A prime example: the saga of United Airlines and the Macadamia nuts served to first-class passengers. Whether fliers cared is questionable, says Plog, but the decision by United's bean counters (no pun intended) in the 1970s to substitute less-expensive peanuts triggered wide and, for everyone but United, funny news media attention.