There are a small variety of airways that provide inflight cooks, who usually assist with getting ready meals in first and enterprise class. On this publish, I’d like to speak about that in a bit extra element — which airways have inflight cooks, and is that this only a advertising and marketing gimmick, or is there some substance to it?
Which airways have onboard cooks?
To start out, let’s speak about which airways even have inflight cooks. These days you’ll discover them on choose flights of the next airways:
- Austrian Airways
- Garuda Indonesia
- Saudia Airways
- Turkish Airways
Again within the day, Etihad Airways and Gulf Air additionally had inflight cooks, however they’ve been eradicated in recent times to chop prices, in order that’s now not provided. For instance, under is a promotional video that Etihad made again within the day about its inflight chef program (which is now not out there).
Are onboard cooks a gimmick, or what do they do?
Who’re these onboard cooks for airways providing this service, and the way do their duties differ from these of normal flight attendants? Typically talking, onboard cooks are specifically employed primarily based on their culinary expertise, so that they have completely different job expertise than “customary” flight attendants.
Nonetheless, they’re additionally usually educated as flight attendants (by way of security and repair), so that you’ll normally see them within the regular flight attendant uniform for takeoff and touchdown, after which they’ll placed on the chef’s uniform for the meal providers. However is there actually such a factor as an onboard “chef,” or is that this all advertising and marketing?
The onboard chef is doing nothing that flight attendants couldn’t in any other case do. On airways with out onboard cooks, you usually have flight attendants working the “galley” place, that means they’re not really going to be within the aisle throughout the meal service, however quite will likely be within the galley getting ready meals, in order that the opposite flight attendants can serve them to passengers.
So there’s not some kitchen with open flames for the airways which have onboard cooks. Most issues on planes are simply reheated, with few exceptions. For instance, some airways put together eggs onboard. However that’s even completed on airways with out onboard cooks, like Cathay Pacific and Lufthansa.
Essentially, the onboard chef place is advertising and marketing, however I feel the larger takeaway is that usually when an airline has onboard cooks, additionally they make investments extra within the total meal service. For instance, all enterprise class meals aren’t created equal.
On some airways, it’s clear that meals is catered because it’s to be offered, and all of the crew does is warmth it up (the under image is from EgyptAir).
In the meantime on different airways, meals is catered in aluminum containers, after which the crew plates it (the under image is from Turkish Airways).
As you’ll be able to see, the presentation may be vastly completely different. So usually when there’s an onboard chef in enterprise or top notch, it implies that meals is plated onboard, and that they is perhaps including some cute touches to the presentation. Clearly meals may additionally style higher if the person components are first heated after which individually plated collectively, quite than every thing being heated on one plate.
I usually function beneath the belief that if an airline has an onboard chef, it additionally has high notch catering. Nonetheless, there are airways with out onboard cooks which have glorious catering.
Backside line
A number of airways provide onboard cooks, which is a singular idea that actually will get passengers speaking. Onboard cooks aren’t doing one thing that couldn’t in any other case be completed. In different phrases, they’re not cooking with open flames or making your meals from scratch.
As a substitute, it’s a cool alternative for airways so as to add a particular contact to a meal service. The largest takeaway from an airline having an onboard chef is that they make investments greater than common of their meals and beverage choices, so throughout the board I’ve discovered airways with onboard cooks to supply among the many finest meals within the skies.
I don’t suppose that’s particularly due to the onboard cooks, however quite due to airways’ commitments to their tender product. In the meantime there are additionally loads of airways which have distinctive catering regardless of not having onboard cooks.
Should you’ve had an onboard chef on a flight, what was your expertise like?
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