Here’s a negative airline story that doesn’t involve Southwest Airlines, which I’d say is a nice change of pace this week…
Eurowings serves expired food
OMAAT reader Adrian flew today on Eurowings flight 7406 from Hamburg (HAM) to Paris (CDG). For those not familiar, Eurowings is Lufthansa’s regional low cost carrier subsidiary. He was flying in BIZclass, the name of Eurowings’ premium cabin.
One of the primary benefits of flying in BIZclass is a complimentary meal, though perhaps that was less of a perk today. The meal on this flight consisted of a tapas meat platter in a box. Only after eating most of the meal did he look more carefully at the box, where he found out that the food had expired.
The food was 18 days past its “best before” date — the date listed was December 11, while the flight took place on December 29.
Goodness gracious. It’s one thing to eat a yogurt or a bag of pretzels a few days past the expiration date, but I wouldn’t want to be served meat that’s this far past its expiration.
Admittedly Eurowings’ inflight magazine talks about reducing food waste, though serving food 18 days past its “best by” date probably isn’t the ideal way to go about that. 😉
How could something like this happen?
Serving a meal this far past its intended date is kind of shocking. I can appreciate how packaged snacks could end up on multiple flights, and once in a while maybe the date isn’t checked. But when we’re talking about a meat platter, you’d think they’d be a bit more aware of the expiration date.
How exactly did this happen? Was this catered onto multiple flights and not consumed, and just kept ending up in the catering facility? Was this somehow lost in the catering facility, and only found a few weeks later, and then catered onto a flight without anyone checking the date?
I don’t recall ever looking at the expiration date of what I’m consuming on a plane, though maybe it’s time that I do.
I’d say this is pretty surprising, though at the same time I always like to emphasize that airline operations are ridiculously complicated. So much goes into making airlines run smoothly, and there are countless moving parts. When you consider the complexity involved, the airline industry is one of the most well run in the world (broadly speaking, obviously there are sometimes exceptions). So just like any other industry, it’s not surprising that sometimes things go wrong.
Bottom line
An OMAAT reader was flying BIZclass on Eurowings, and was served an expired meal. The meal was supposed to be consumed by December 11, but was still being served on a flight on December 29. That’s pretty bad.
What’s your take on this expired meal, and how do you think it happened?