Originally Posted by bhdcommuter

Any LH flight departing before 9.30am will have breakfast catered as standard. No bar round is offered as its considered to early., however a full bar service is normally offered during the flight or sometimes before the start of the 2nd meal service. There should have been at least one tuck box in the galley after the service was completed. The standard for the 2nd service is tea/coffee/juice or water, however some crews do place soft drinks on the carts, and officially other drinks are on request. In some destinations bar paperwork is required for customs purposes, however it is normal practice to leave at least one bar open for ad-hoc drink requests.

Crew breaks are nice however on some flights they need to be a certain length of time otherwise the crew could not legally operate the route. This particular JNB rotation is an interesting one, as sometimes the crew operate to DUR then fly down to JNB with Comair to avoid longer layovers. The flight time is 11hrs 35 mins and the duty is 13hrs 15 mins, with the maximum duty you can do is 13 hours if the crew were acclimatised to JNB time, however since they only probably had 1 night in JNB they would still be acclimatised to UK time and therefore the max duty is reduced and as such crew rest is needed to ensure the flight could operate.

Depending on how long it took to deliver the first meal, the amount of time to achieve the rest required could have been reduced however 1hr 20 mins seems a bit tight for a 2nd hot service, maybe for a cold 2nd meal like a sandwich etc but personally I like to see at least 1hr 45mins so we are not rushed. We can tailor the service onboard on the day to ensure crew get enough rest to operate the flight for example if we are delayed, it may be the case that no bar round is completed before the main meal or that the meal is delivered with less crew.