Oooh... Forbidden Rice Salad...

I don't know what it is, but I want it.

If it's a choice of this or frickin' McDonalds, yes.

I haven't gotten a meal on a flight in probably 5 years...

Ah, yes. The elusive, Forbidden Rice Salad. Sure, they could sell it to you, but should they?

I would totally pay for this. I am sick of the greasy pizza available at the gate and sure don't want to carry stuff on to the plane. These choices actually sound pretty good and the price is about what you pay anyway. Certainly, if the fare is about the same, this meal would factor in to make the difference in choosing Delta for me.

Why does that chicken look like it has chocolate on it?

Will I pay for this food?
I think I would if the actual food resembled the photo included. We all know that there are countless instances where "what you see is not what you get." I imagine that lovely-lit photograph that has been retouched and color enhanced (to bring out the wonderful colors in the vegetables) is not going to resemble the mish-mash of ingredients tossed in the microwave and served to me covered in plastic wrap.

"Is this chicken or is it rubber?"

@mrjimbo19: They grilled the shit out of it!

I'll take meals into account when choosing who to fly with long distance as part of the overall comfort of the flight. If a ticket for Airline A is $25 more than a comparable ticket for Airline B, but Airline A has better food, then I'd take Airline A - especially if it's a transatlantic flight.

It can't be worse than United's $5 "healthy options" snack box, featuring "Cat Food For Humans" Tuna with lemon.

a "sundried tortilla" sounds awful, but par for the course for airline food. oh, if someone had only remembered to add the "tomatoes" when churning out these prefab vom-inducers!

The only thing I care about in air travel is whether or not the airline will get me to my destination safely and on-time. My favorite airline is Southwest, but they don't fly out of the area where I live now.

actually seems like decent food at decent prices, though it should be free :-)

Man, I remember the 1970s and early 1980s where you got a meal on any flight that lasted over an hour. The last domestic meal I ever had was May 1985, AA MD-80 from DFW-BWI. It was a pancake breakfast. When I flew AA DFW-TPA in 1996 there was a "bistro" cart with sandwiches in the jetway but that doesn't really count. Strangely enough I have not seen the bistro cart except on that one flight.

As bad a rap as airline food has, I can't recall ever having any unpalatable food. Generally the food is pretty good, though it may not win any awards.

(poke to get my comment to appear)

If the food is as good as they serve in 1st class, I'd be willing to pay $10 for it.

I'll take DEANNIE's "greasy pizza" and trade you for this fancy-name-having rubber chicken. I do believe we should all know that not only will the food not look like this, but it will certainly not taste as good as the ingredients should make it... I have no idea how airline catering companies ruin food so perfectly each time, but bravo to them for keeping my stomach empty of food but happily awash in Scotch & Club Soda in each flight I'm on that sells alcohol.

The only airlines I've had "good" food on (read: edible and a decent portion) --
- KLM (actually had a fresh German coldcut tray brought onboard once when I was flying with them from Frankfurt to Cambridge, UK... brotchen bread too)
- British Air (a few years back it was good anyhow)
- Lufthansa

@thepounder:

JAL, Asiana, and KAL are about the only ones where I've had good food.

Gee, the US must be the only place in the world suffering from high fuel costs, antiquated control systems, and overcrowded airports, considering how much more pleasant it is to fly just about everywhere else in the industrialized world (and some developing countries, even).

I do not for a second believe any excuse offered by US airline execs for anything, period. LIES, LIES, LIES! Airlines, ISPs, automakers, and whoever else: Americans are too well-traveled to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist anymore. The grass IS greener on the other side of the fence, for fucking real, and your customers know it.

@TechnoDestructo: You make a great point about US airlines. It just seems like they don't "get it".
Put me in charge a any of the myriad of craptastic US airlines (Southwest not included as far as I'm concerned) and I'll send "spies" on overseas flights with KLM, JAL, Lefthansa, British Air, Asiana, etc., and aggregate all of the good things (food, etc) each airline does and use the idea with the airline I'm in charge of, maybe charge just enough more for tickets to cover those expenses, and Bam, more business. Oh, and I'll have Stewards and Stewardesses (not Flight Attendants) take some form of aptitude test as well, so there's no more permanently grumpy sorts interacting with the passengers.

Sounds similar to the menu that Delta used on the lower cost Song. I flew Song quite a bit and enjoyed the option of buying something to eat (vs. the peanuts or crackers) and they had some yummy options - fruit and cheese plate was my fave.

If it's real food, and not a "sandwich" (as they call it) that I'm paying for, I'll pay. There's nothing worse than landing in your destination city at 11:30 at night and THEN trying to find food...or getting to your room 15 minutes after room service has stopped taking orders. I don't like traveling hungry, or worse - arriving somewhere hungry, and trying to get my bearings. That said, Yep...I'd pay.

These airlines just dont get it. We don't want to pay you 10 bucks for crappy food. We want you to make the effort and include it. If you can afford to put all the extra weight of 300 copies of Skymall and airphones, on the odd chance some rich person actually orders/uses these things, you can afford to feed us. Comeon, I remember the omlettes and fruitcups. The pancakes! The dinner! Comeon. Virgin America is gonna steal all the business away from US airlines, because I sense that they are going to include everything and bring back the glory days.

I just carry half a dozen Clif bars in my briefcase when I travel. 90% of the time they're more appealing than anything I can find at the airport.

Exception would be the Potbelly's at MDW. Yummy.

It won't look that good in the air, however. But at least you're paying for some half decent food at about the same price as the junk other airlines try to pass off.

I've had good airline food on El-Al, but that was ten years ago.

@thepounder:
Make sure you take into account the government subsidies that go into other countries airlines that allow them to provide for more passenger creature comforts. In essence, taxpayers in the countries who never fly are helping to cover the costs of the meals on these flights.

@acambras: Bad news - it's cursed.

Don't consider
Bring my own food on long flights.

Stopping at Trader Joes or Potbelly Sandwich company is better then anything they give me on the plane anyway.

@liquisoft said: They grilled the shit out of it!

Probably not. Just about anything you see in ads for food (that normally requires cooking) is largely inedible. The outside of the chicken might be steamed, and the "grill marks" are made with a heated piece of metal. Food stylists and chefs do very different things to make what goes on a plate look good. Even something like a scoop of ice cream is probably a thin layer with a chilled sphere of some sort underneath it to make it look perfect.

@Whoa:

The burger Michael Douglas went apeshit over in Falling Down probably tasted better than the one in the store's photo.

@Whoa:

I'm more than well aware, my good man. I art direct design for a living, and believe you me we retouch the heck out of things just to make them look CLOSE to the way they look in real life.

Food is especially difficult, because photographs of food will always look unappetizing and inedible unless some heavy science is used. If you go to your local mom & pop food joint, you'll see what I mean. Food in real life might look delicious, but when you take a candid photo of it it'll become disgusting.

When I said they grilled the shit out of it, I meant that was the impression they were trying to give. In actuality those "grill marks" look like they were made with a sharpie.

@mrjimbo19: The "chocolate" is the "forbidden rice" (assuming the photo actually is the meal, which it seems to be). Forbidden rice is actually black.

And yes, I'd pay for this. That chicken sandwich with the mozz sounds good. And so does the fruit & cheese platter for breakfast.

@BelBivDevolkswagen:
I've gotten 17 meals on 13 flights this year. I've flown 16 segments total--2 without service and one I probably slept through the light meal.
What was your point? Long haul flights, inter-asia, foreign carriers...all are serving meals. It is pretty misleading to just state that you haven't got a meal on a flight in 5 years. For all we know, you haven't flown a single segment in 10 years.

American got five bucks out of me after sitting on the pavement in Dallas for 60 minutes after we pulled away from the gate. I was happy to spend it and they were happy to get it and the chicken wrap was pretty delicious. And back there in last class, I was happy that something was LEFT.

So here's my question in logic. As we wait in our airplanes longer and longer the airlines focus on selling us food? That's brilliant. Instead of focusing all their energies on providing us quick service and fixing the problems that cause us to wait for hours, they decide to sell us food as we are basically held captive in their airplanes. Am I wrong?Or is this a fantastic idea?

I always end up on planes right when I would like to be eating meals and I either have to eat ahead of time at the terminal or wait til I get where I'm going. I'd pay $10 for this potentially better food.

@tcm22: Well, doesn't the US government always keep bailing out airlines like US Airways and United when they're all on the verge of bankruptcy? So isn't that essentially subsidizing them? Virgin America will be the start of a revolution for hte airline industry.

@badgeman46: you said it best, I agree we dont care about some magazine that cost hundreds of thousands to operate a year, most of us have headphones, and we dont care about the rest of that crap, a little good real free food would go along way. if anyone has ever flown midwest airlines you would agree with me that they go the extra mile in every respect (better food, nicer more comfortable roomier seats, and free warm chocolate cookies), but fly them soon, northwest just bought them and all that will probably end soon since nw is probably the worst of them all, BUT i 100% agree that virgin america will have all my future business if possible...well said...

I haven't flown in 2 years, so I plead ignorance... but couldn't you pack a sandwich and a bag of nuts or a banana or something like that in your carry-on? Then you don't have to waste more money on the airline and you get to eat at your convenience something palatable.

When flying on flights which don't include a meal (or if I'm sure I won't like the food) I personally find the bagel shop in the airport and grab a bagel with peanut butter on it, then just stuff it in my backpack. Something like coupled with whatever beverage the airline provides will easily keep you satisfied for 5-6 hours of sitting in your seat.

I recently flew to London on American Airlines and got a meal and a "light breakfast" or "light dinner" each way. They were all delicious. I would gladly pay for food of that quality on a domestic flight.

I bring my own sandwich whenever I fly. I also bring a few snacks as well in case I become a ramp hostage.

If more airlines start once again to offer food, i'm sure our good friends at TSA will start confiscating your food at the checkpoint. Can't let the terrorists win after all.

Take a moment to look at:

[www.airlinemeals.net]

I like looking at the meals from some of the unknown soviet airlines.