Why do we put up with bad in-flight food?

In Transit:IT IS POSSIBLY the best letter in the history of complaints. After getting his in-flight dinner tray, a passenger travelling from Mumbai to London with Virgin Atlantic in December 2008 was mystified by what the "food" in the dinky containers was supposed to be.

He photographed his meal before eating it, and when he touched down in London he e-mailed the results to Richard Branson, the airline’s president, along with some withering comments. “What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the des[s]ert?” he asked.

When he pulled back the foil on the main course he found

“a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird”.

The dessert was some class of cookie that came “in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast . . . Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth”.

The e-mail went viral, was read by millions of people and generated so many headlines that a red-faced Branson was forced to contact the unhappy diner to show what a good sport he was. Virgin even went so far as to invite the traveller to help choose its next menu. Inside, Branson must have been seething.

It could be argued that, instead of moaning about overdone chicken, stringy beef or rock-hard cookies, we should marvel at the fact that we are eating it all 10km above land while travelling at almost 1,000km/h in a metal tube filled with flammable liquids.

We probably should, but that’s not likely to happen. We have an enormous appetite for in-flight-catering horror stories, at least if the proliferation of websites dedicated to the topic is anything to go by. Passengers lovingly document some of the worst examples, posting photographs so other people can share their revulsion.

The two main pieces of advice to help you get a better class of meal on a long-haul flight are to bring your own food – although this isn’t entirely practical if you want a hot meal: just try to get a flask past security – or to pre-order the vegetarian option, as it’s meant to be harder to muck up a veggie meal.

Harder, perhaps, but not impossible. One carnivore who contacted us decided to try out the veggie theory en route from Paris to Buenos Aires with Air France. The meal – which was the first to be served, in an added benefit for vegetarians – consisted of a bread roll (sans butter), a carrot sandwich (sans mayonnaise), a small plain bun (sans sugar) and some tepid water.

Within minutes the passengers around our reader were stuffing their faces with what looked and smelled like a delicious beef-ravioli starter and chicken-stew main course, followed by a cheese platter, a cream cake and an exotic yogurt. She wasn’t even given wine with her “meal”. Perhaps the cabin crew took the hump at her choice of food or assumed there was no way a vegetarian would want to pollute her body with anything as coarse as alcohol.

The days of free food on short-haul flights are all but gone – for many airlines the death knell was sounded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, when slashing costs became a driving imperative. Food is available for purchase, but despite inflated prices it is, more often than not, horrible. We are still willing to pay for it, however, because flying and eating are inextricably linked for many of us.

While we accepted poor- quality food when it was included as part of the fare, airline executives in the US believe the economics have changed. This week the managing director of consumer marketing at US Airways, Kevin Jackson, said that as airlines have started to charge for food, they have an incentive “to provide better choice and quality for passengers”.

But at what cost? A survey by travelsupermarket.com has found that holidaymakers who don’t buy before they board their flights end up paying through the nose for drinks and snacks. The report says that the average mark-up on airline snacks is more than 350 per cent over supermarket prices, with Ryanair coming out as the worst airline for on-board snack prices, according to its Airline Snacks Barometer.