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Airline food on Thai Airways
We booked Thai Airways for our flight to Bangkok. We had initially looked into both Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific thinking they would be cheaper, especially Ceb Pac, which is supposed to be a low cost carrier (LCC) or a budget airlines. They both turned out to be expensive so I suggested to the wife to check out Thai Airways since we were spending anyway and we wanted to have the full service that included decent inflight meals. Lo and behold, Thai Airways was actually cheaper than PAL or CebPac (note that we booked early so we had a lot of options for the latter airlines).
Our Thai Airways Airbus A350 at the NAIA Terminal 3. Also shown in the photo is the old Philippine Village Hotel building that surprisingly has not been demolished despite being abandoned for more than 3 decades. This is the proposed site of a Terminal 5 for NAIA that will be constructed and operated by San Miguel Corporation.
We had two choices for our inflight meal – stir-fried shrimp with chili sauce and rice or chicken in tomato sauce with pasta.
The stir-fried shrimp with chili sauce came with carrots and young corn on the side. The set included salad, cake for dessert and a bun.
The only difference between the set was the main course. This is the chicken and pasta I eventually ate when I exchanged meals with my daughter who surprised us by preferring the spicy shrimp.
The A350 was equipped with a tail camera for those who wanted this view of the plane. I took a video of when the plane landed to show my students about the landing including when the plane exited the runway via the rapid exit ramp.
We thought the food on economy class was okay and definitely better than what could have been served on either PAL or CebPac. What are better (on economy) if not similar in quality would be the food on Singapore Airlines and Japan Airlines.
More on our travel to Thailand in the next posts.
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Inflight meals onboard AirAsia flight MNL-KUL
Airline food is probably among the most maligned among meals. You’ve probably read or heard about complaints on meals served on board aircraft; especially those on Economy Class or coach. You have to be in Business Class or First Class to be served good meals or sets. If you are not the picky kind, then you will likely find the simply joys with the meals served on low cost carriers. These are usually selected and paid for in advance though you can also order in-flight assuming they carry all those items on their menu. Here are some items with AirAsia’s Santan:
Promotion of in-flight meals on AirAsia
The Chicken Rending and Vegetable Curry meals look good on paper.
So are the Chicken Biryani and Vegetable Biryani meals.
The Chicken Rice and Thai Basil Chicken dishes are also familiar to me. I wondered if the airline got these right and if they would be satisfying to passengers choosing these on-board or perhaps pre-ordering them.
Nasi Lemak sounded familiar and was perhaps something we tasted when we were still residing in Singapore.
There’s a vegetarian or plant-based version of this dish.
I settled for something familiar and enjoyable to me – Chicken Satay
The rice was curiously prepared and served similar to the ‘puso’ found in the Visayan and Mindanao provinces of the Philippines.
To cut the story short, I enjoyed my simple meal on-board AirAsia. I would dare say that I found my meals on this airline better than what I have eaten on-board Cebu Pacific. The meals also were better than what we recently had on board Philippine Airlines. That says a lot considering PAL is a full service airline. Of course, the meals on board Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways are would be tops on my list even in Economy Class.
Something I wanted to write about is my take on airline food over the years. I have a good memory of my first airline meals on board PAL in the 1970s. And I have had my fair share of various airline meals including First and Business Class meals on various airlines. That should be fun to write about!
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Limited – Inflight meals on Cebu Pacific
My friends and I were just talking about inflight meals prior to boarding our Cebu Pacific flights last week. En route to Zamboanga, we didn’t have to get some refreshments for the typically 1.5-hour flight. There were many choices to eat from at NAIA Terminal 3. However, heading back to Manila on a lunchtime flight, we joked about what could be available on the plane. We all had our experiences of ordering items on their menu for flights scheduled at different times of the day (e.g., red eye, last flight) and it always seems as if the airline didn’t have many if not most of what appears on their menu.
Lucky Me cup noodles and pretzels for lunch
To be fair, the airline offers pre-ordered meals that they do deliver inflight. We got pre-ordered meals for our flights to and from Singapore last year. But not everyone would usually avail of this option and there is real demand for inflight meals even if there were just pastries or quickly prepared (i.e., instant) meals. I don’t remember the last time we were able to avail a meal more decent than the cup noodles shown in the photo. In fact, we were curious about the new items they had in the menu that included champorado (chocolate porridge). That was supposed to be available last December 2019 but so far we haven’t had the chance to have it inflight.
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Caught (up) in traffic 