American Airlines Passenger Served 16-Month-Old Meal
Jennifer Billock June 12, 2019
Apparently, a lot of airlines freeze their meals and keep them frozen up to a year before serving them on the plane — but a recent passenger on American Airlines discovered that his vegetarian meal wasn’t just a year old, but nearly a year and a half old. At least he ended up getting something else to eat.
American Airlines—and many other airlines—freeze their passenger meals for up to the extent of their yearlong shelf life. But a passenger on a recent American Airlines flight had a different experience when he ordered a special vegetarian meal and discovered it was made 16 months prior, well past the year mark.
“I was shocked so waited until regular service and asked the flight attendant,” the passenger said, reported by View from the Wing. “She went and brought another attendant to understand/figure out. I explained my concern that the meal was manufactured in Feb 2018 and this is June 2019. The second attendant took the meal from me and came back. The next part is hilarious. She told me that the date is NOT the expiration date of the meal. I didn’t know how to respond to that. They were nice enough to offer me the regular pasta which I ended up eating.”
The passenger didn’t want to eat the meal because he couldn’t be sure it was kept at the right temperature for that entire length of time.
American Airlines did comment, noting that the meal was served within the guidelines of the industry standard. But, the airline is working on getting meals for passengers that are no older than 40 to 60 days.
[Featured Image: Twitter/ sjaytx]
Passenger is fussy as well as stupid.
Manufacturer is an American company, but there is a chance the date code is DD-MM-YYYY, so seven months old instead. It is more common for numbers-only date codes to use this format, consistent with much more of the world. It is as annoying there is this uncertainty - for instance, 02Nov2018 is pretty difficult to misinterpret. Flash frozen, deep-frozen food technology is pretty sound - its not like it was dropped in a residential freezer.
Opened this thinking a passenger was served a baby meal.
MRE anyone ?
The passenger was worried that it hadn't been stored properly for the entire length of time? Wouldn't the same concern be there is the meal was 2 days old? Why is this even worthy of a report?