Originally Posted by
Concerto
But the overall winner is SUN-AIR of Scandinavia, a little Danish franchise airline belonging to BA, and they sure spend more than €5 on each passenger on their food and drink offering (a full meal service on all flights).
No way. The caterer receives less than EUR 2 per hot meal, less than EUR 1 per cold meal.
We're had this discussion on VFT multiple times and were occasionally joined by somebody who had worked for the catering industry.
I've never flown SUN-AIR. But I see they don't do long haul. Airlines spend well under EUR 5 per pax for the entire long-haul catering in eco. No way that carrier spends more for its short-/medium-haul flights.
--
Even the extravaganzas some airlines afford aren't very costly. For instance, on AF long-haul, you can get one glass of (real) champagne for free. But even that isn't so costly to AF. Back-of-the-envelope calculation: AF pays EUR 15 per bottle. I'd guess slightly under half of eco pax choose champagne. They get seven or eight glasses out of a bottle (they give you a fairly small glass). So you need one bottle per 15+ pax. That's a cost of at most a euro per pax.