One of the fall backs from the reduced in-flight catering service on most airlines is that passengers increasingly bring food into the cabin; either because inflight catering is non-existent or not satisfactory.

I was in 7C in a 735 a flight from IAH-LGA this evening and the chap next to me in 7B had this big wrapped up food from Taco Bell which I could smell immediately I entered the coach cabin. For me it got worse when I discovered I was sitting right next to the source of this smell. Believe me if you are not the one eating it the smell is irritating at best and nauseous at worst. Anyway just as the door is about to close he proceeds to start his 'meal'. He does ask me to excuse him for eating.

Anyway I thought fine he will soon be done and then I can get on with my flight. Well he know proceeds to eat this 'meal' for the entire 25 minutes it took us to taxi and wait for our take-off slot, through the takeoff and then continues to nibble piecemeal at this meal for the first 35 minutes we were airborne. All this while reading several pages of the Wall Street Journal. So the net result is that we had the odour and sight of his food for an hour. Now surely that is dragging it a bit - even my local McDonalds will call the cops if you spend more than 30 mins consuming your 'fast' food on suspicion you may be loitering. Anyway it does not end there because this thing continues to smell for another half hour until the FAs come round collecting trash.

So the net result is I spent one and half hours of a 3 hour plus flight next to this smell and at a point was feeling real awful.

So tell me what you think. Maybe it is okay as I do not think we can expect people not to bring on food (we all do) but should we express more choice regarding what we do bring on board? Surely if we all stopped at taco or burger king on way in, the plane would be like a pig-sty and would need fumigation prior to turnover for next flight. I personally can be certain I can bring on board some (ethic) foods from my mum, that will take over the whole cabin, such that copassengers will need either oxygen masks or the TSA ejecting my food to survive the flight. On the other hand I can bring on some innocous fruit or pastry. So surely there must be a balance somewhere.

So far this is probably not a big issue on CO because catering is still relatively good but as cuts continue I suspect it will increase and ultimately airlines will pay a price for the derisory state of in-flight catering.