Glossary: ​​Food on the plane – travel

An airline celebrates its offer of simply not eating as the final customer orientation. But that’s old hat.

Buckle up, “fasten your seat belts” as the airline says, because the following message could tear frequent flyers from their seats: A Japanese airline whose name is irrelevant here (only this much: the short form also stands for anorexia nervosa) has it On March 31st this year, two new, well, onboard meals were introduced, namely the “Quick & Light Meal” and the “No thank you” option. The former consists of a salad, a sandwich and a dessert, the latter consists of canceling the meal, so ultimately nothing. A spokesman for the airline is quoted as saying, “By offering different options for in-flight services, we give passengers more flexibility and control over how they experience our brand.” In addition, the amount of food waste should be reduced. However, there is no talk of a discount for nothing.

Of course, savvy experts will immediately recognize the age-old marketing trick of selling the reduction to the essentials as an upgrade, in order to ideally increase profits as well. Because the “No thank you” option, along with its marketing formulas, has a long tradition in the on-the-go industry, and not just with the low-cost airlines, but with everything from adventures to drinking vacations. Reinhold Messner climbed high mountains quite quickly and lightly without oxygen bottles or even dessert and can still make a living from it today. For several years now, the entire outdoor scene has been celebrating ultra-light trekking with equipment that weighs only a gram and is outrageously expensive as a big trend – often forgetting that veteran hikers like the fantastic Appalachian hiker Emma Gatewood, known as Grandma Gatewood, in the sixties only packed the essentials.

In hotels, the “No, thank you” for room cleaning and towels is often sold as promotion to the next league of environmental and climate protection. The “No, thank you” to the Internet runs under the Digital Detox, which is subject to a surcharge, and the renunciation of level as switching off in Mallorca. Even the interiors of the cars are becoming increasingly spartan, despite the outrageous prices.

Of course, the most honest thing would be to significantly expand the “No thank you” option; in the above case, for example, for the entire flight, and to sweeten this waiver with a meal in the aircraft that has been converted into a restaurant. Incidentally, that is exactly what the above-mentioned Japanese airline actually offered at the height of the Corona crisis. For the equivalent of 460 euros, passengers could eat a menu with foie gras, crab foam and Japanese beef in a parked Boeing 777. According to media reports, the tickets were sold within a very short time. If you didn’t want to eat anything, you had the unbeatable “No thank you” option of not going at all. And that was even free.