On flights across time zones, why is the serving of meals and cabin lighting not synchronized to the time zone of the destination?
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 2 Aug, 2023
- |
Almost all airlines follow the same procedure these days on "long enough" international flights
- Main meal service happens as soon as is feasible after takeoff.
- Second light meal or snack service about 60-90 minutes before landing.
Ultra long hauls used to have a mid-flight service but it that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
This has several advantages
- At least it provides consistency and crews and passengers know what to expect.
- It works reasonably well for both day and night flights.
- It creates a predictable work routine for the flight crew.
- It maximizes uninterrupted down time for the crew
- It maximizes uninterrupted time for passengers if they want to sleep or work
Trying to adjust this based, time zones at departure and arrival would be quite complicated and messy, so, I guess, a single "one-size-fits-all" solutions seems a reasonable choice.
Your experience seems to have been an exception. Especially on night flights the crew will try get the meal service under way and lights out as soon as is feasible. "Feasible" is the key here: this can be delayed by turbulence, technical issues with the galley, catering problems, etc.
From experience, they try to stretch it given the huge number of constraints that they have to deal with:
- Departure: They can’t start serving until about 1 hour after takeoff and it can take more than an hour to serve all passengers.
- Arrival: They can’t be serving or collecting less than 45 mins before landing, so they have to serve with enough time for the last one served to finish their meal and trays collected.
- This leaves few usable hours which they have to distribute meals across.
- Lastly flights rarely nicely overlap meal hours of the destination.
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