Emirates, Qatar top, Ryanair last in UK passengers’ in-flight food, drinks ratings

Airline food has long had a reputation for offering preheated meat, dry bread and soggy salads to rows of hungry flyers, per this report by The Independent newspaper of the UK.

Now, new research has revealed the airlines serving the best and worst plane food to passengers to help travellers taking off put their taste buds first.

According to a YouGov survey, Emirates is the king of the cabin kitchen, with 85 percent of passengers giving a positive review for their in-flight meals and 84 percent of respondents rating them “very” or “somewhat” good for snacks and drinks.

The survey polled 1,495 UK travellers who have flown with the nine most popular airlines in the country in the last 12 months to create the ranking of plane food providers.

In second place, 82 percent of Qatar Airways frequent flyers said they had been served a good onboard meal, with a similarly positive performance for its stock of snacks (83 per cent).

The snack flavours of Virgin Atlantic were favoured by 74 percent of passengers, while flag carrier British Airways scored a 61 percent rating for its in-flight snacks and drinks and a 63 percent “good” score for its meals.

In the mid-field, Jet2 (53 percent) and Tui Airways (50 percent) scored averagely for snacks with both receiving a 49 percent rating for their in-flight meals.

At the bottom of the plane food rankings, 50 percent of Ryanair passengers rated the airline’s food “somewhat” or “very bad” with only 17 percent of its passengers rating meals positively.

The Irish airline’s snacks also saw a bad review with 41 percent of ratings negative.

Wizz Air fared only slightly better – 23 percent of travellers described its meals as good, and 40 percent were less than impressed.

Low-cost carrier easyJet had mixed reviews for meals as 29 percent of passengers rated them well, while 32 per cent said they were poor.