In the already pretty great film adaptation of the Wolf Haas crime novel “The Bone Man” there is this wonderful scene: Josef Hader in the role of private detective Brenner enters a restaurant, but is ignored. So he insults the innkeeper in a sarcastic tone: Here the guest really is the king. The innkeeper, played by Sepp Bierbichler, then calmly replies: “This is a tavern, not an inn.”
Now an airplane is neither one thing nor the other, but above all a means of transport. One with a long range, however. Which is why it may be acceptable on a flight from Berlin to Rome to offer the passengers a bag of peanuts along with two sips of cola or coffee – and it’s good. But on transatlantic routes, a little snack isn’t enough.
Anyone who is on board for eight or ten hours needs a warm meal in between. Simply because passengers become drunk more quickly and more frequently than they already do. Just recently, a plane on the way to New York had to stop again in order to have two drunken and aggressive passengers arrested. When it comes to the food on offer, however, the question of an airline’s self-image arises. So depending on who wears the crown – the guest or the host?
“Chicken or pasta?” was the standard question asked by flight attendants to passengers for many years, asked dozens of times at an altitude of ten kilometers. Those sitting in the back row sometimes didn’t even have this limited choice because either the chicken or the noodles were already out. Overall, that sounds more like a tavern.
At some point, however, things turned around and passengers have had more choice since then. The question is no longer the only one: meat or non-meat? Lufthansa, for example, has almost a dozen options on offer: a vegan menu, a kosher menu, a low-sodium menu and a gluten-free menu. Bookable 24 hours before departure. So the clear trend: inn.
And because guests have fundamentally terrible rights, as every good host knows, they take full advantage of this broader offering. Hundreds of special menus are now standard on long-haul flights, reports Lufthansa’s “Cabin Staff Representation”. Which, as in any poorly managed economy, seems to lead to chaos on board: no one knows which food should be served in which place.
The staff representatives are now proposing three things: to only serve a limited number of special meals, to limit the selection to religiously or health-required variants and to charge a surcharge for such special requests. That would mean: Anyone who wants to eat vegan is simply out of luck. Anyone who wants food that is kosher or halal can get it, but simply because they are Jewish or Muslim they have to pay more for the food than a Christian or atheist. That would be the Sun King version of Wirthaus.
Stefan Fischer is waiting for the day when colleague B., who sharpens everything in the canteen, sprinkles chili powder over a Kaiserschmarrn.
(Photo: Bernd Schifferdecker (illustration))