Actually, from a medical and travel medicine perspective, for a returning traveller with food poisoning, the airline meals are just as suspicious as the food that the traveller has taken during his/her trip.

I think there are just so situations that the food can be mishandled or poorly stored, esp. in tropical weather, which is a receipe for disaster.

Airplanes are also a potential reservoir for other gastrointestinal infections, including Norwalk virus - the type of virus associated with diarrhoea en-masse which has commonly occured on cruise ships.