"Fly the hungry skies"

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Fly the hungry skies 
Airlines have cut food on flights, leaving airport vendors to fill
travelers' stomachs 
BY JOHN GILLIE
The Tacoma (WA) News Tribune

 
In the brief minutes before boarding their Delta Air Lines flight to Atlanta
on Wednesday, the members of the University of Washington women's soccer
team are scattered among the quick-food places that line Sea-Tac Airport's A
Concourse. Their mission: Buy a nutritious snack to tide them over during
their nearly five-hour flight. 

Though their flight would span both the lunch and dinner hours, the price of
the trip didn't include a meal. They could buy a meal on board from Delta's
menu, but most team members said they preferred the cuisine and the choices
the airport vendors offered.

"We've learned from making several trips that it's better to buy food now
then take a chance on what the airline offers," said team member Colby
Branham.

The team's preflight ritual is one that is becoming increasingly familiar to
air travelers.

Compelled to cut costs by the limp travel demand, high fuel costs and
vicious competition since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the
nation's airlines have radically altered the norm for onboard food service.
Free coach class meals have become as rare as orcas in Oklahoma.

Until recently, the Puget Sound-area air travel market was insulated from
airlines' moves to eliminate meal service. Two main factors were at work:

. First, the Puget Sound region's distance from many of the nation's
business and vacation centers in the East meant average flight times from
Sea-Tac were unusually long. Airlines that trimmed back food service
typically did so on shorter flights first.

. Second, the region's dominant carrier, Alaska Airlines, was hesitant to
eliminate coach-class meal service. Alaska had built a strong following in
part because it spent more than its competitors on food service.

But three years of huge airline industry losses are forcing changes.
Airlines that once included meals as part of a coach ticket from Sea-Tac
Airport have eliminated complimentary meals. And Alaska, after fighting to
keep meal service at meal times on long flights, will begin an experiment in
January selling "hearty sandwiches" on nonstop flights from Sea-Tac to
Mexico. The airline will continue to provide free meals on transcontinental
flights.

Alaska, headquartered in SeaTac, is trying to shave its per- passenger mile
costs to 7.25 cents to successfully compete with low-cost carriers. That
means saving money at every reasonable opportunity - from cutting ground
times for aircraft to "right-sizing" aircraft used on less popular routes.

Alaska's experiment comes only after much of the industry has abandoned
coach-class meals or substituted "buy-onboard" meals for free food. Of the
nine major U.S. carriers, only Alaska and Continental haven't made wholesale
changes regarding meals.

And many of the low-cost carriers that have remained successful during the
downturn always have been scornful of serving food - even before the events
of Sept. 11. A 2001 promotional T-shirt for low-cost start-up carrier
JetBlue Airways, for instance, features a plump hen silk-screened on the
front with the slogan, "Nature never intended it to fly." A card that
accompanies the shirt explains the message. 
    
"Millions of travelers will tell you airline food is lousy. But so far,
JetBlue is the only airline to agree with them. At JetBlue, we have spent a
lot of time thinking about what matters most to our passengers. We have too
much respect for our customers to serve them 'airline food.'"

And perennially successful Southwest Airlines has made no secret that it
serves only snacks such as peanuts. At one point, it named its lowest-fare
category after the legumes.

Alaska Airlines marketing vice president Tom Romary said Alaska's surveys
show food service ranks behind friendly service, on-time arrivals and
reliable baggage handling among the attributes customers value in an
airline.

"We really wanted to maintain the high-quality experience on Alaska while
trimming the overall cost," Romary said. "We think the meals we'll be
offering on our Mexico flights will be high quality for a relative bargain
price, $5." 

But Romary and Andrea Olsen, head of Alaska's in-flight meals program, said
the Mexico experiment doesn't necessarily mean an end to free coach-class
food on Alaska. "We don't intend to rush to judgment," Olsen said.

Buy on board 

The fact that Alaska is considering ending free coach-class food shows how
broadly the air travel crisis has changed the ecosystem surrounding
travelers' food.

On one hand, the crisis has gravely threatened traditional airline food
suppliers. On the other, it has opened up new markets for other food
vendors. 

According to industry figures, food service companies such as LSG Sky Chefs
and Gate Gourmet International lost as much as 40 percent of their business
after Sept. 11. Most airlines contract with these major food vendors to
supply them with in-flight meals.

The vendors' response to that downturn has been to market their services
directly to airline customers through "buy on board" programs. The vendors
continue furnishing meals, but their sales depend not on mass orders from
the airlines, but from selling their food to individual travelers.

In a way, the vendors' shift to direct marketing is a return to airline
food's roots. The first airline meals reportedly were offered to travelers
on London-to-Paris flights in 1919 for 3 shillings. 

Airlines have adopted varying approaches to onboard meal sales. Some, such
as Delta, offer a fairly broad selection. Others, such as United Airlines'
low-fare subsidiary Ted, offer a simpler menu.

Ted's TedSelect Snackboxes come in just four variations called JumpStart,
Minimeal, QuickPick and FunPack. Each contains a variety of snacks. The
QuickPick, for example, contains hickory-smoked beef jerky, white corn
tortilla chips, salsa, pretzels, honey-coated trail mix and a chocolate chip
cookie. The price is $5.

Delta Airlines' "Food for Purchase" program is typical of the more ambitious
programs. Travelers receive a menu of available entrees and snacks. Flight
attendants sell those meals for $2 to $8 as they pass through the aisles.

The onboard programs offer travelers a better variety of food ranging from
salads to light snacks. Because the onboard menus offer a variety of prices
and selections, the choices tend to be more adventuresome than the ordinary,
"offend no one" airline choices.

Care for a turkey cranberry twist? 

Delta's latest menu offered four breakfast selections: a fruit cup for $5, a
honey wheat bagel or a pumpkin muffin for $3 and a turkey-and-jack-cheese
sandwich on a bagel for $6. 

For lunch or dinner, Delta's menu offered two salads - a balsamic bleu or a
grilled chicken caesar - both with a french roll, for $8; a turkey cranberry
twist on asiago focaccia bread with provolone cheese or a roast
beef-and-horseradish-cheddar-cheese sandwich on focaccia for $8. For the
smaller appetite, the menu offered a kid's peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich
or a pumpkin praline cheesecake for $5, or a chocolate chunk cookie for $2.

The Delta program also offers snacks at minibar prices: mixed nuts for $4,
trail mix, potato chips or animal crackers for $3 and an Endangered Species
Chocolate Company Rainforest Bar for $2.

American Airlines is offering a variation of the onboard sales program at
its Dallas hub. It sells prepackaged meals at the gate before travelers
board.

Sea-Tac Airport fliers traveling on American are among the lucky few who
still get complimentary meals, Passengers pluck American's grab-and-go
Bistro Bag from a refrigerated cart on the enclosed corridor leading to the
plane.

Hooking up with restaurants

Industry sources say the onboard sales have been reasonably successful, with
about 21 percent of travelers opting to buy a meal from the airline menu.

The trick is matching the demand with the supply. Too many unsold meals mean
losses. Too few mean lost sales opportunities and upset travelers.

The onboard vendors have allied themselves with terrestrial restaurant brand
names to broaden their appeals. United's food supplier has allied itself
with popular restaurants like Bennigan's, Hard Rock Cafe and Eli's
Cheesecake Factory. Delta's onboard selections are prepared with recipes
from Atlanta Bread Co. and Delta's own food brand name, Savorings. Au bon
pain and TGI Friday's furnish American's food for sale.

Other food industry segments stand to benefit from the changes in airline
food policy. Chief among those are airport food vendors who have seen their
eat-in-the-airport sales rise because travelers are grabbing a bite before
and after flights as well as from customers who are buying to-go foods to
brown-bag onto planes.

One of the positives of buying food at Sea-Tac before climbing onto a plane
is that the airport prohibits vendors from selling menu items for more than
they do at their other locations. A Burger King Whopper, for example, must
cost the same in the terminal as it does in University Place.

At Sea-Tac Airport's La Pisa Cafe, for instance, Lane Fujiioka, the general
manager, said 30 to 40 percent of items purchased at the cafe are "to-go"
items.

"We've learned to pack them without spreading condiments on the sandwich,
but including those condiments in separate packages so the sandwiches don't
get soggy on flights," he said.

La Pisa Cafe's most popular items for travel food are cold sandwiches, but
some travelers even take pizza to eat aboard.

Unlike some sports stadiums, airlines permit brown bags - and some, like
JetBlue, even encourage them to keep passengers happy.

At Sea-Tac's Great American Bagel Bakery, store lead Emerita Caoagdan said
much of the business is bagels and grab-and-go sandwiches. 

"A lot of people order an item and ask us to wrap it up double," Caoagdan
said. "The airlines' move away from food has been a definite benefit to us."


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