Air Canada New meal offerings for International Business Class Customers
 

New meal offerings for International Business Class Customers
October 1, 2014

http://www.aircanada.com/en/news/141001.html

To provide our customers with the best possible service, we continually strive to refresh and enhance our onboard offerings.

In the spring of 2014, we conducted extensive research to gather important customer feedback. As a result, the following changes to our International Business Class service were introduced in the fall of 2014:

À la Carte Breakfast

On flights from Canada to Europe, customers can now fill out an order card to choose from a selection of beverages, as well as hot and cold breakfast items, which will be served to them prior to landing, at a time of their choosing.
Customers can also indicate if they do not wish to be woken or if they will not be having breakfast, maximizing their sleep time as they will not be disturbed.

Long Haul Service

On our long haul flights between Toronto and Asia, Toronto and Tel Aviv as well as on flights between Vancouver and Sydney, Australia, we've upgraded our main meal service offering by introducing the following:

Entrées will be plated, sauced and garnished in the galley by our cabin crew, elevating the onboard dining experience to a more restaurant-like experience. Meals such as grilled Alberta AAA beef tenderloin with Cabernet peppercorn sauce, served with Yukon Gold lobster mashed potato and sautéed asparagus will be presented on new, stylish white plates.
Cheese service is now offered tableside, from a cheese board, where passengers can choose from three cheeses, like Cantonnier, Camembert and Medium Cheddar, served with juicy grapes, crackers and warm bread.
For dessert, cake and fresh seasonal fruit will be served tableside from a presentation trolley. Customers can make their selection and even indulge in a bit of both if they wish.

On all flights between Toronto and Asia, we've introduced a brunch service prior to landing. Customers can still choose between a western style breakfast, such as an omelet with cherry tomato ragout, roasted potatoes and spinach, or an Asian inspired dish, such as Chinese-style rice congee with chicken, shiitake mushroom and spring onion. However, customers who may want something other than breakfast can opt for brunch options such as e-fu noodles with mushrooms, shrimp dim sum and pork siu mai.

Learn more about our International Business Class service.

Sounds great (some we've heard). I like that it's being plated in the Galley on the longer flights.

I wish they would include YVR - Asia on this as well.

nice! :)^

:confused:

Warm bread with cheese?

Bread temperature is a common issue with plane food. Room temperature is ideal. A warm soft dinner roll can be nice. Sometimes bread comes really cold, which is not nice.

But I don't get warm bread with cheese. Won't that just mess up the cheese?

Sounds good.
I like to have both fruit and cheese after dinner but find the portion is too much for a long flight and won't able to get a good sleep. I have a YYZ-HKG next month and will definitely try out both in smaller portion.

I have this weird urge to book international business class now :eek: :eek: :eek:

Sounds great. I hope the Wine service has been upgraded. It's about time they serve a good French Rhone, Burgandy, or Bordeaux 2nd Growth.

Apart from the perception of choice the cynic in me thinks this is really a cost saving move spun as an "enhancement" as now they don't have to give everyone all the items for breakfast etc. for example now they stock 20 yogurts, etc instead of the whole cabin. They now serve the snacks that were usually on hand during the flight as the brunch option? As well, with the reduction of flight attendants recently last month their work load will be even greater.... service will be even slower now that they have to spend additional time plating...

And to honest i would prefer if the FAs didn't have to expose, touch, or plate the food right next to the bathrooms... They aren't trained food handlers and you know someone will have just finished restocking or using the bathroom... where it is difficult to get a good hand wash especially on the older planes without the auto faucets.

Cant please everyone ;)

Why not flights to Europe too? sigh...

Awesome! I'm flying YYZ-HKG on Friday. The new brunch service instead of breakfast sounds great.

Entrées will be plated, sauced and garnished in the galley by our cabin crew

Back to the previous service level.

I was just on one of these flights (well HND) and it was that same breakfast on arrival. I've never liked it. So I took the breakfast tray and had them cook up the dim sum snacks and the noodle soup with dumplings and used that as the main.

Mind you that's sort of what the descriptions implies they are doing officially now. Hopefully it's a little more substantial!


This makes me wish I hadn't just done a trip and had another one scheduled for the next month or two! :)

Good to see AC making service progress (even if it's just going back to the way things used to be).

How the hell does this make any sense? What a total load of crap.

YYZTLV is 10:35

YVRHKG is 13:05
YVRPVG is 12:10
etc etc

Is this simply due to the caterers on these routes being the only ones who can handle the new format?

Looking forward to trying the new service next week...

I immediately think of YVR - HKG on the HD, and imagine that plating so many there would be challenging. :p

Not sure how you cooked this one up... this is not a cost savings exercise; we spent $$ for all these initiatives. Yes, we no longer to board yogurt for everyone on Europe but at the same time, we added extra options too and we don't get them for free - Oatmeal, quiche, 2 kinds of cereals.

The brunch option has nothing to do with snacks, the current 3rd option we've added on YYZ/Asia just so happens to be a stir fry noodles with dim sum (which is a very popular brunch item in Asia) - nothing to do with the mid flight snacks dim sum.

I flew on YYZ-NRT today with the new crew complement, meal service completed within 2.5 hrs as per our specifications. (And no, I didn't help out as I am not allowed to serve customers or work as a FA) On all the trial flights we ran before launch, none of the meal service took longer than 2.5 hours. Of course there will be flights that will take a bit longer as our galley flight attendants get used to doing this - many of them have done this before and some have never done it so that's where the variation will come in at launch.

Ultra Long Haul flights as phase 1 (Which is all the YYZ-Asia & YVR-SYD). We added TLV as that's a year round 788 flight from YYZ.

Other stations will be added in 2015. We need a phase in approach for such a big change.

There should have been a 3rd option - full casserole with stir fry noodles/dim sum as the brunch option. Did you have that on your flight? (Oct 1) If not, please do let me know.

I believe every flight mentioned originates in YYZ, was the YVR-SYD is in essence YYZ-YVR-SYD.

I would assume by that the the catering for these new services are in YYZ only.

Certainly not the intention... all it means is that it's not totally cold.

I think it's great. Thank you for upgrading the experience, hopefully it is as good as it sounds.

Hey Andrew,

Thanks! Any updates on updating domestic J meals or are there no initiatives for that?

Thanks
Penguin

I think these changes sound very promising. Thanks!!

Will this mean the beef won't be a hockey puck in soup going forward? 4/5 times it is what I receive. The 1/5 times it isn't, it's because I ask them to take it out 5 minutes early and they do. Then it comes out warm, medium-rare, and no soup. I understand the 787 has programmed ovens to cook different dishes to different levels but flight from Haneda last week still presented beef soup. Other airlines don't seem to have this issue, and quite clearly it can even be avoided on Air Canada as long as the timing is done right. It would really make the meal more pleasant. The other dishes also suffer from this sort of issue, but less prominently.

787 has steam ovens so it tends to cook the food better. You shouldn't see as much water in the dishes now with galley plating as the flight attendant is manually plating the dish so they are not going to pour the watery sauce onto the dish as well. We're not the only airline with that issue, I've seen similar on my flights on CX, BA in J - believe it has something to do with the ovens and the fact that the beef has to be pre-cooked (hence you see the piece of bread we put under the steak to absorb some of it). Hopefully with steam ovens and galley plating your beef will be better! Keep me posted on your experiences.

Not yet, 2015. International is higher on the priority list for us for obvious reasons.

What is the big deal about manual plating? The food won't taste any better. Hygiene can be uneven something the oven managed much better. Now, portions may be uneven as well. Bigger and better for FA favourites. Invisible for me. Where is Tedgrrrr?

Have you heard of 'you eat with your eyes'? Better presentation makes the food much more appealing right off the bat.

As for portion size, each dish is one set of kit for the crew to plate. There's no favorites to play.

As for hygiene, and how exactly is this different than a restaurant?

Will the 777 get steam ovens as well when they're refurbished?

Well there are health inspections (how often are AC galley's inspected by Transport Canada?) at most restaurants YMMV. Do AC crews get certification on food handling, is this taught as a module as part of the training? Not a slam, BTW !

Restaurant cooks wear clothes specifically worn in kitchens. Flight attendants wear clothes that can be contaminated anywhere in the plane, in the airport, or prior to the airport sitting on the bus/subway on the way to the airport. Cooks in restaurants don't restock or clean toilets, wipe up throwup, touch dirty airplane seats and seat belts or handle random passenger jackets/luggage, etc. It is against food handling regulations to wear outside clothes in a proper kitchen. Is AC going to make all the FAs wear hair nets or hats when plating food so stray hairs do not fall in the dish?

Kitchens have proper hand wash stations where soap is plenty and the water stays on for a good cleaning (not little levers that you must hold down to get water like on the 767). I was on a flight two weeks ago where the J galley on the a320 sink was COVERED WITH CARDBOARD. All there was was hand sanitizer in there to wash up! That situation WILL happen again if AC lets aircraft fly like that and this program is moved to domestic. All AC needs is one person have fecal particles on their hand from using the bathroom and unlock the door without washing and it spreads.

The situation improves with auto sinks in the new planes but still issues with using the door handle in the bathroom and unlocking mechanism. Will they be trained to use paper towels to unlock the door?

I understand the potential visual appeal of having them plate food but lets not pretend the FAs are professional food handlers who wanted a career preparing food. Especially when their numbers are being cut increasing their workload already... And now expecting them to do even more.

I understand there is not much that can be done on a plane about some of this stuff. I would have expected an answer in the realm of "we will try to mitigate and train staff in proper sanitary food handling" but defensive response of how hygiene in an airplane is no different from a kitchen scares the hell out of me and makes me think that almost no thought have been put into the hygiene side of making the FAs deal with food.

I am all for increasing quality and value and commend any improvements that can be done as the cuts and quality decreases have certainly been large the past couple of years.

It sounds like a good idea to me.

Now ... is my flight YYZ-IST in 4 weeks considered "Asia"?

Ah. IST is the only place in Turkey that's in Europe. Rest of the country is in Asia.

:D

(Which BTW regarding their application for EU membership, membership probably ought to be restricted to Istambul.... :D )

Well, Istanbul and the part west of there that borders Bulgaria and Greece...

But I wasn't asking if Istanbul *is* in Asia, I was asking if AC considered it to be part of Asia for this change... :)

Many of our competing 4* carriers have done galley plating for years and there are no adverse affects; frankly this is why many of them receive higher scores on meals/meal presentation in surveys and industry awards (e.g. Skytrax). We will serve this food with the same high level of service, quality, and care as we always have, nothing will diminish as a result. I'm afraid that if you are that concerned about your food not getting contaminated onboard, my only suggestion would be for you to pack your own.

When I flew the IST-YYZ route, I was surprised to receive the daytime amenity kit on this route (I know they have gotten rid of these in J now), so despite the 11 hour flight time it was treated as a daytime European flight. Hopefully when you take it, it has moved to Asia!

As a matter of fact we have covered food handling and hygiene and galley plating gloves are provided. We couldn't possibly handle and prepare burning hot food from ovens with our bare hands.

Was this recently? Amenity kits have been standardized on all J/C International routes. The previous "day" kits are the standard for PY.

I am sure you can afford to be much nicer. The poster raised coherent issues. If I am in your position, I will do my best to reassure over his concerns. That other Airline receive higher marks because they plate on board is not reasurance enough. Is it possible their FAs received the training the poster is asking for?