Explained: Why food tastes different when flying

Most people would agree that they had never had a meal while flying that came close to the food served in a quality restaurant, begins this piece culled from Simple Flying.

Apart from top airlines that go out of their way to provide fine dining for first and business class passengers, for the most part, airline food in economy class is premade and then reheated in ovens and generally nothing to write home about.

While lacking flavour and tasting bland, it’s easy to blame airlines for this, but in all fairness, it is not their fault. When we are given a meal aboard a plane, we use all of our senses to discern how we feel about it. First is how the food looks and is presented, followed by the smell, taste, and texture.

Passengers leave their normal sense of smell and taste at the departure gate

Airline food often tastes bland because modern-day aircraft fly at cruising altitudes above 30,000 feet while passengers sit in low-humidity pressurised aircraft cabins.

Because of the lack of moisture in the air, your sense of smell is diminished, and due to vibrations and plane noise, a nerve in the middle ear plays havoc with your taste buds, making savoury food more savoury and sweet foods less sweet — a person’s perception of saltiness and sweetness drops when inside a pressurised cabin.

According to Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, you lose your sense of smell and taste once you board an aircraft. At 30,000 feet, the humidity aboard a plane is drier than it would be in most of the planet’s deserts, affecting your ability to discern saltiness and sweetness by 30 percent. In contrast, sour, bitter, and spicy flavours are almost unaffected.

The history of airline food

The idea of serving food to passengers on flights has existed since the first international flight between London and Paris took place on October 11, 1919.

The aircraft, a converted twin-engine Handley-Page WWI bomber, took off from Hounslow Heath Aerodrome in London and landed at Paris–Le Bourget airfield. During the 2.5-hour flight, cabin boys served passengers a lunch box consisting of sandwiches and fruit.

Hot food was first served on flights in 1928 when German airline Lufthansa offered a dedicated meal service on its Junkers G 31 flights between Berlin and Paris. It would help if you remembered that in the early years of flying, aircraft were not pressurised like they are today and usually flew at a cruising altitude of 3,000 feet. At this height, food tastes the same as it would if you were at sea level.

In 1939, Pan American Airways began offering transatlantic and transpacific flights on its Boeing 314 Clipper flying boats, taking onboard dining to a new level. On these flights, passengers were served gourmet meals on fine bone china by white-gloved, tuxedo-clad stewards.

When the first pressurised passenger aircraft, the Boeing 307 Stratoliner, entered service with Pan American Airways in 1940, pilots could now cruise at altitudes above 20,000 feet. The ability to do this meant that rather than flying through storms, they could now fly above them, making for a better passenger experience.

During the 1940s, refrigeration leaped forward, leading to the rise of freezing food and heating it up before serving. Pan American soon adopted the idea of frozen meals for its flights, which meant that if a flight was cancelled, the food would not be wasted.

By the 1950s, it was customary to serve hot meals on flights, but it became more of a challenge in the 1960s as aircraft became larger.

Airlines developed special menus

Realising that noise and the lack of humidity affected people’s senses, airlines began tweaking their menus to improve food taste.

French airline Union de Transports Aeriens asked the owner of Le Grand Véfour restaurant in Paris, Chef Raymond Oliver, to create a menu that would appeal more to passengers’ taste buds when flying.

Photo: British Airways

Oliver achieved this by increasing the amount of salt, sugar, and oil used in their recipes. This appeared to do the trick, and other airlines soon followed suit, creating menus that would be tasty at altitude.

Today, airline head chefs are tasked with creating inflight menus that overcome a person’s diminished senses.

British Airways seasonal recipes vary by region

United Kingdom national flag carrier British Airways typically offers 18 different menus depending on where the flight departs.

For example, if you leave London Heathrow, you can expect to be served fresh British seasonal produce. Likewise, if your flight departs from an Asian country, the menu will include local dishes like curries and stir-fries.

Photo: British Airways

When discussing how to create dishes that will taste good at 35,000 feet, British Airways Head Chef Mark Tazzioli discusses the tricks he uses to improve airline food. While being interviewed for the British Airways blog, Tazzioli was asked a series of questions.

What is the secret of serving tasty airline food?

“We have to allow for the fact that around 30% of people lose the ability to taste well at altitude, so we use robust flavours and ensure they have enough moisture so they don’t dry out when reheated.”

How does this affect your creativity with a menu?

We have to use creativity carefully, which is mostly about flavour and taste. Last year, we remade many of our sauces and adjusted recipes so they tasted better in the air — much of which required looking at the science of the food and the logistics behind transporting it.

What flavours do you think work best?

Anything spicy works well in the air. Chicken tikka masala and butter chicken are popular, and this winter, we’re doing braised beef dishes that don’t dry out when they’re reheated. Our smoked salmon is also specially cured for us with slightly stronger smoke so that the flavour isn’t lost at altitude. For vegetarians, we have pasta dishes with strong sauces, such as tomato bases or wild mushrooms, which are strong in umami, a naturally occurring salt substitute without sodium. We’ve also developed Thai and South Indian vegetable curries, which work well.