Originally Posted by
B-HQC
I don't find this to be true at all - most of the time it is 2,00 on the dot, but often 2,15 or 2,20. They also put most of the lights on when serving breakfast (to be fair most airlines do this), but BA, VS, QF, etc. to name a few do not.
It's now a one tray service prepped from the galley so I don't understand why passengers need to be woken up so early. Everything is normally collected and put away with 75+ mins to go, leaving plenty of time for the crew to then have their breakfast in the galley.
Agreed 100%.
I have been tracking this since it's my pet peeves too. In the past 2 years, for the times I have tracked lights on time it's as followed:
T-1h50mins, T-2hr, T-2h41mins, T-2h15mins, T-2h10mins, T-2h30mins, T-2h10mins, T-2h45mins.
Seems like there is no real consistency and it comes largely down to individual crew execution. I will note that on those early instances, turbulence was not a factor (aka they didn't start early because there were anticipated turbulence close to landing).
There was also one time where the menu clearly stated breakfast prior to landing (on a 15hr flight), I ordered snacks just before mid-flight and specifically confirmed with them breakfast is going to be served prior to landing. They served me the snack and barely 1hr later they turned on the lights to serve breakfast... Took the same flight couple months later and the service flow was per the menu timings.
And yes I have made the same comments on this thread before. The breakfast service nowadays is a 1-tray service that they could have started assembling with the order cards before turning the lights on. There were times where lights were turned on so early, and we all stared at each other for the next 40mins at 1:30am HKT (those early morning arrivals from North America into HKG) waiting for breakfast to be served. Meanwhile other airlines such as AC and UA could do a breakfast service with lights on at T-1h15mins with
no pre-ordering.