I was wondering how many meals they bring on board in different situations for First class? A few scenarios; First, say there are only three people in F on an MD80, do they now that, or do they always load 14 meals? Second, say a flight is full on a plane with 18 seats in F and they are serving a choice of Chicken, fish or Pasta, do they load 6 of each? Do they load say 8 of each, knowing they will end up with extras but so more paxs get there choice? Also, I can easily understand why they would not bring more meals than pax, but what about something like the dessert, when you have a choice of fruit or ice cream, do they bring enough for everyone to have each, or some proportion, or half and half for the number of pax?

Sorry I don't have your answers to the above questions. But, a great site is http://www.airlinemeals.net/ it is the "World's first and leading site about nothing but airline food". Check it out, you would be amazed on what is there.

disclaimer - I have nothing to do with the referenced website. It is just bookmarked on my Favorites and I have utilized it once or twice myself.

I've got it bookmarked also, funny, but useful resourse. ^

If there are 3 booked - 2 hours before they will most likely load 4 meals, 2 of each choice, this is assuming Coach is not oversold. If coach is oversold they will load 3 plus the number of oversold passengers in coach usually 50/50 of each meal. If a flight is full they will only load 18 meals if its a choice of 3 then Fish is usually the lowest and somehow they seem to think Pasta the highest. But honestly I dont think anybody knows how they select how many of each meal to load.

They cater most flights based on the load factor or bookings from the day of travel. That load factor also includes the non-rev's who have meal listed for that flight. When you are non-revving you are not guaranteed a meal but when you put a reservation in the system the meal load goes up even if you don't get on.

When the flight is boarding and they decide that there are more passengers checking in then were on the original list they call a catering rep and the rep comes down and supplies you with supplemental meals from an on-site meal room at the airport. Sometimes these sup meals are different than the origninal meal choices and you have completely different things to give people than originally offered.

When they give you the sup selections they usually include all the levels of service associated with that seat you just bought. If you are in first and the dessert is sundays they load another ice cream. The problems with sundaes arise when they load 10 more ice creams but you still have the original amount of chocolate syrup, nuts, berries, whipped cream, and caramel. Then you have to be stingy.

Other problems arise when the airplane is scheduled to go to caribbean destinations that don't have catering facilities. In that case the airplane starts the day with the catering and if the load goes up downline for the turnaround it is too bad. Some people don't get to eat. That's always fun. For the most part, though, the catering on these flights is usually right on the money and nobody goes hungry.

When was the last time that happened? I'm more used to seeing 14 in F and 3 in Y.

Right now I'm sitting in the A Club at DFW waiting for my flight, I just upgraded that that made 4 in the cabin on an MD80

To bad it's just to Austin

I guess that means that catering will have to board an extra bag of pretzels! The only time I routinely see light loads in F is DFW-AUS and LAX-SFO.

You know the one, last thing at night,

[FEBO Gentleman next to me in 5B] Sir, we have a choice of Roasted Vegetable Pizza or a Fried Chicken dish.
[Me in 5E] Sir we have a Roasted Vegetable Pizza for dinner tonight.

Hmmm, 10 Pizza, 4 fried chicken. That makes sense.

Ben.

Hey, hey, AAFA, thanks for this, and the other, factual and enlightening posts! :-: Glad you're along for the ride.

Cheers (or better, ohaio gozamasu, since I'm in Japan at the moment.)