45,000 Airline Catering Jobs Are at Risk, Unions Say
Plans by the nation's major airlines to eliminate meals on many flights by Nov. 1 could cost as many as 45,000 jobs in the catering industry by the end of the year, organized labor said yesterday.
Most major airlines, including American, Northwest, US Airways and America West, have informed their catering services they are eliminating meals on many flights, generally the shorter ones. Delta and United acknowledged yesterday that they are planning to cut meals, although they have not publicly announced the decision.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18057-2001Oct18.html
wigstheone
Oct 24, 01, 8:08 am
Many Airlines to Stop Serving Meals
ould you care for dinner?" the flight attendant asks.
"What are the choices?" the passenger says.
"Yes and no," the flight attendant replies.
With the mounting miseries of air travel, that little joke, which was timely as recently as a month ago when airlines were merely cutting back on the quality and variety of the food they served, is already out of date. Very soon, at mealtime on most domestic flights, most airlines will no longer offer even a Hobson's choice — which is defined as no choice at all.
That is because many airlines are eliminating most meal service, except on international flights. If you want lunch on that business trip from, say, Boston to Chicago, you'll probably have to brown-bag it yourself.
Yesterday, United Airlines, joined most of its major competitors and said it was eliminating a big portion of its meal service. Economy-class passengers "on flights that are 1,635 miles or less, which equates to about 3 hours and 45 minutes, will not have meals," said Chris Nardella, a United spokeswoman.
In first class, meals are being eliminated on flights under two hours, or about 700 miles, she said. Meal service on international flights is largely unchanged.
United thus joined American Airlines Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, US Airways, Midwest Express Airlines, T.W.A. and others in announcing sharp reductions in in- flight meal service in recent weeks. The only major holdout was Continental Airlines, which said yesterday that it would continue to serve meals as usual on its planes.
Airline Food-Catering Industry Is Reeling
Two companies, LSG Sky Chefs, owned by Lufthansa, and Gate Gourmet, owned by SAir Group, the parent of the financially troubled airline Swissair, dominate the in-flight meal business, operating kitchens around the world that turn out about 60 percent of all airline meals.
LSG, whose main customer in the United States is American Airlines, said in late September that it would lay off about 30 percent of its domestic work force of 16,300 at kitchens at 58 domestic airports. Gate Gourmet said it had eliminated 1,800 jobs in the United States.
"We're getting lots of conflicting reports, but across the board, the numbers I'm getting are 20 to 30 percent staff reductions" in the airline catering industry, said Steven P. Bowling, the executive director of the International Inflight Food Service Association.
"It looks very bad, and it could get worse," said Tom Snyder, a spokesman for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, which represents many of the in-flight catering industry workers. "We already have about 25 percent of our members in both LSG and Gate Gourmet laid off."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/24/business/24TRAV.html