Originally Posted by dspringer28
I was wondering how many meals they bring on board in different situations for First class? A few scenarios; First, say there are only three people in F on an MD80, do they now that, or do they always load 14 meals? Second, say a flight is full on a plane with 18 seats in F and they are serving a choice of Chicken, fish or Pasta, do they load 6 of each? Do they load say 8 of each, knowing they will end up with extras but so more paxs get there choice? Also, I can easily understand why they would not bring more meals than pax, but what about something like the dessert, when you have a choice of fruit or ice cream, do they bring enough for everyone to have each, or some proportion, or half and half for the number of pax?
They cater most flights based on the load factor or bookings from the day of travel. That load factor also includes the non-rev's who have meal listed for that flight. When you are non-revving you are not guaranteed a meal but when you put a reservation in the system the meal load goes up even if you don't get on.
When the flight is boarding and they decide that there are more passengers checking in then were on the original list they call a catering rep and the rep comes down and supplies you with supplemental meals from an on-site meal room at the airport. Sometimes these sup meals are different than the origninal meal choices and you have completely different things to give people than originally offered.
When they give you the sup selections they usually include all the levels of service associated with that seat you just bought. If you are in first and the dessert is sundays they load another ice cream. The problems with sundaes arise when they load 10 more ice creams but you still have the original amount of chocolate syrup, nuts, berries, whipped cream, and caramel. Then you have to be stingy.
Other problems arise when the airplane is scheduled to go to caribbean destinations that don't have catering facilities. In that case the airplane starts the day with the catering and if the load goes up downline for the turnaround it is too bad. Some people don't get to eat. That's always fun. For the most part, though, the catering on these flights is usually right on the money and nobody goes hungry.