Very poor food - template BA response
 

What would you do? Food poisoning is very difficult to ascertain - whether from a flight or other previously eaten dish.

On the 31st I took a flight from Phoenix to London in economy. We were given a choice of vegetarian or chicken curry. I ordered the chicken which came lukewarm generally but cold in places. The staff made an announcement saying there was a problem and they would reheat the dishes that hadn't yet been served - but that all already served dishes were OK to eat (the lukewarm chicken came with a salad that was totally frozen). 8 or so hours later, on landing in Heathrow I had severe diarrhea and stomach cramps. I hadn't eaten for 6 hours before the flight and felt well. The illness lasted about 36 hours.

I have emailed BA and received what appears to be a fairly standard template response including 'We choose our catering partners carefully and we set very high standards for food preparation. Our suppliers must have strict processes in place when preparing all meals' which doesn't appear to address the issue.

While I appreciate that anything could have caused the problem, but BA has not addressed the fact that chicken, especially, needs (from reading a food safety source) 70 degrees C for at least two minutes and serving lukewarm chicken is not acceptable.

Having had a fairly dismissive reply already what would you do?

I think it will be very difficult to prove that the upset stomach from which you, the OP, suffered from was due to the food that was served on the BA flight. I don't see any benefit in pursuing that line of argument with BA. However, I do think there is probably some merit in replying to their initial response and stating that you are unsatisfied with that, and that it does not address the issues raised in your original complaint. Certainly having a lukewarm meal served to you isn't acceptable and this has nothing to do with BA's catering partners. I would have assumed that before meals are served that some quality control process is followed to ensure that the meals have, in fact, been heated to the recommended temperature. Something clearly went amiss here, but whether that was something to do with the ovens either not working, not being set to the right settings, food being taken out too early etc. it's difficult to say.

I would certainly write back to BA or follow-up with a phone call to Customer Relations where you can perhaps get the message across over the phone, and hopefully get this resolved to your satisfaction. From my own personal point of view, I often get more wound up by BA's response when it misses the point altogether and doesn't address any of the issues raised than with the original issue. Good luck!

Isn't food poisoning (proven or suspected) a notifable diesease to public health? Am a bit rusty on the regs. Your G.P may know. It flags wider issues i.e. if number of other people who you may not know but were on the flight were also affected. If the source was the underheated chicken then there will be others. All that said though these things often turn out to be unrelated to food and more to do with airport/airline toilets!

I would never, under any circumstances, fly ba again.

That's just about the limit of what any one person can do.

The worrying bit in the OPs tale is that crew appear to have recognised they'd somehow mismanaged the heating, but decided binning, or grabbing back, the meals already handed out was going to be a problem.

So they breezily pronounced them just fine for consumption.

Staff reviewing these complaints spend somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 seconds selecting pre-written text. This complaint is about poor food so it got the poor food response. Nothing will change that. Not worth the effort to follow up.

Were your symptoms diagnosed as food poisoning by a professional?

I agree that the timelines seem too short in this case for food poisoning from that meal, though it may have been non food but still flight related (i.e. noro, which is pretty quick). However if BA's crew suspected there was a problem, reheating food again to somehow "deal" with a problem is against the food handling protocols that I'm familiar with, not least due to the risk of cross contamination. If there is a perceived risk - into the bin it goes! It's fine if the crew had kept it in the original packaging and decided to give the items a few more minutes directly after the first cook, but once it gets to a passenger's table I don't think it should be returned to the oven. I appreciate this causes a customer service issue of some proportion on a longish flight. Either way, however, it shouldn't be dangerous to eat so long as it was properly cooked and then secured throughout before serving.

But it still needs to be mentioned to BA in case there were wider issues, there's also Twitter / DM.

I am not disputing anything the OP has said and I know no facts about this case other than those posted.

Yet I am always fascinated by people who allege food poisoning. Food poisoning kills people. At best, you will be in bed for several days and most likely you will face a spell under medical care being re-hydrated. Eating something that causes diarrhoea and a feeling of being unwell is not food poisoning. It's like people who are unable to call in sick with a cold. They always have flu or pneumonia..Sounds more dramatic but is factually incorrect.

Diarrhoea is most likely caused by poor hygiene practices This includes the individual, which investigators find is the most common cause - incomplete or absent hand washing for example. We are all aware that aircraft, especially BA aircraft, are not noted for their cleanliness, let alone hygiene. External factors may be on the ground, in transport or in preparation. If the root cause was on the ground, I would imagine the ramifications would be spread far and wide and BA would be receiving a significant numbers of complaints from across several flights. At best, poor hygiene practices on the aircraft would result in complaints from other passengers on that aircraft. If only one person becomes ill, it is likely that the individual is the cause.

In preparation, the food will be cooked to the appropriate temperature.It will then be kept refrigerated for a prescribed maximum time. This will limit any bacterial growth until it is reheated and served. In theory, even if the food is not reheated, it should not be dangerous if the initial temperature and time controls are working. the fact that airlines can serve chilled cooked meat and fish is evidence of this. The time control is critical and is the reason that on a delayed flight, the catering is replenished with new.