Originally Posted by
tracon
Nothing says catering can't be done in house.
Unless the person responsible for ordering meals hasn't figured out the flight is now operated by a two cabin a/c.
There is no evidence it was crew meals that weren't ordered. It would be faster for the crew to walk into the terminal, order and expense the meal to the employer.
Catering can be done in house but it would be an expensive option for Air Canada and would increase operating costs. Western airlines outsource catering to reduce their costs and to increase operational flexibility.
The "person" ordering the meals will most certainly know that there is a two cabin configuration because the flight will have been subject to planning months in advance. An airline doesn't just add a route willy nilly. The preparation will have involved a review from the onboard experience group and this includes a review of catering needs.
On any given day there will be delays or changes or swaps and the contractors are prepared. There are "contingency" snack/meals prepared that the caterer can rush into place on an aircraft on short notice.
However, what the catering company cannot stop is human error. Have a look at who works the catering trucks and the kitchens of the airline catering companies in Canada. These are not positions which attract the best educated or most cognitively sharp workers. It's a struggle to have these workers comply with basic food hygiene regulations. There is a supply chain from the ordering of ingredients to the preparation to the dispatch to the delivery of the order. The instructions have to be provided in an easy to follow format. Despite all the bar coding and tracking software, the orders can still get botched. And that screw up is often due to the worker who makes a mistake. In some cases it is because the worker has deficient reading and writing skills (in one of Canada's official languages). In other cases, the worker is sloppy and just forgets that there was a delivery, and there was inadequate supervision to catch the error.
Where you can rightfully blame Air Canada is in the lack of oversight of the catering at the kitchen level and the absence of effective spot checking to identify weaknesses and deficiencies. There is no excuse for rotted fruit or the use of low quality beef or fish which has gone bad. If Air Canada had a tighter oversight of its catering contractor(s), this would not occur.