Seat 2A I found this thread, and found it amazing. The history of air transportation and the history of cuisine are at a complicated nexus of history, economics, and social norms.
Dining on airplanes is fascinating because it is sort of ridiculous: why would I want lobster or caviar on an airplane, when it would taste far better on the ground? It's more about the idea, the logistics, and the laughable pageantry.

In my family, the usual joke is 'Warm mixed nuts presented in a ramekin with your preferred cocktail or beverage." There is no rational reason why that even needs to appear on a printed menu, but it's some absurdly flowery way of suggesting uncontrolled opulence. There is an odd psychology about ice cream sundaes and the even stranger development of Southwest Airlines offering its highest-paying passengers a bag of pistachios. (Of course I'll pay $200 extra if there are 15 pistachios! Why didn't you say so?)

When my grandmother passed away, my parents found all kinds of oddities in her house. There were two boxes of menus, which she had nicked from restaurants and airplane flights. I will never know the rationale: perhaps a souvenir, a diary or scrapbook, or she just felt like she ought to have it as proof that she dined at a particular restaurant or flew on some specific flight. My parents didn't want to just discard the menus, so they shipped them to me, and said 'figure out what to do with these.' I found a professor of Latin American History who studied the culinary traditions of Latin America. Thus, my grandmother's menu collection (mostly Pan Am, Varig, Swissair, and El Al) has a home at the University of Toronto.