Early Days of Airline Food

Early Days of Airline Food
The commercial industry airline industry in the United States developed after World War I when trained military pilots returning home applied their skills to moving mail and light cargo in airplanes.

These planes typically had few passengers seats and when passengers were aboard little thought was given to serving them. Passengers on long flights often brought a box lunch or snack onboard.

It was not until the 1930 that the fledging airline industry designed planes specifically with the idea of moving people as a core business and with these planes, accompanying galleys were instituted.

Form the beginning, despite the challenges like cramped spaces, weights restrictions, and lack of usable electricity onboard, airlines worked to compete with steamship and trains by providing full service dining experiences to passengers, albeit with in-flight accommodations like pillows and lap trays rather than tables.

Coffee was brewed onboard and in-flight meals were purchased from fine restaurants and hotels, kept warm where possible using piped water or glycol heated by the engines and served on china and linen with real cutlery.

By the late 1930s, problems with the quality control, ground transportation and timeliness of food service subcontracted from hotels and restaurants as well as a more competitive marketplace, prompted United Airline, closely followed but its major competitors, to created airport-based kitchens around the country. Airline continued to buy from restaurants and hotels in smaller airports.

The late 1940s and 1950s prompted many of the in-flight dining innovations familiar today. Aircraft after World War I began to be constructed with attachable or attached tray tables, making the dining balancing act a bit easier for passengers.

The ability for planes and later jets to generate usable electricity in flight made commercial kitchen equipment such as oven and warming cabinets, as well as dry ice iceboxes, adaptable to airplane galley.

While these innovations improved the quality and availability of airplane food, problems remained. The short life of refrigerated and reheated food, or food held warm as acceptable for a short or even transcontinental flight but problematic or oceanic fight, on which two or even three meals might have been served en route.

Furthermore, the increase popularity of air travel necessitated costly flight kitchens in nearly every airport, including those where access to reliable fresh food was a challenge.

The increased frequency of transoceanic lights in the 1950s and 1960s prompted a further innovation in in-flight dining: the frozen tray dinner (TV dinner), brought aboard frozen, shipped throughout the world and heated in fight via convection oven.

This last development, removing the restaurant chef from the process, developing standardized 195os-stye frozen entrees and plating a complete meal service in a single dinner tray, complete with an individual cutlery and seasonings packet, represented a major innovation in in-flight efficiency but contributed to many of the negative associations with airline food today.
Early Days of Airline Food
Other related article: Food in Airplane