Celebrity Chefs Make Airline Food Palatable

by Catherine Bodry on

Blogger Grant just posted about American Airlines’ introduction of Hawaiian cuisine on the airline’s mainland-Hawaii flights.

Serving gourmet food on flights is becoming a real trend as airlines try to make flying more enjoyable while also hoping to part passengers from their dollars. I think it’s a bit sneaky to take away in-flight meals only to reintroduce them as items to be purchased, but I can’t help but get excited about the idea of eating genuinely yummy food while flying.

Airline food has been typically always on the unflattering side of food comparisons (along with prison food), but its reputation is changing. Airlines are employing well-known chefs and sommeliers to create menus and wine lists; celebrity chef Todd English will be designing meals for Delta. As soon as November you’ll be able to order a Mediterranean salad with grilled shrimp or a roast beef Cobb sandwich on Delta flights over 750 miles. Meals will run between $2 and $10 dollars.

Air France and Continental Airlines have also used big-name chefs to entice you to fly with them.

[via USA Today]

Northwest Airlines Sponsors Destination and Miles Giveaway

by Grant Martin on

For those of you frequent flyers out there who subscribe to Northwest Airline’s Worldperks program, they just launched their fall promo. Dubbed Mystery Miles, this season’s dish is another points-based program, encouraging travelers to fly certain routes in certain fare classes to collect points. Come January 31, points are tabulated and you get a mileage bonus for the number of points you earned. This can be anywhere in the neighborhood of 500 – 100,000 miles, but 95% of us will be under 10k.

Earlier this year (or was it last?) I participated in the ‘Mile Safari’ promotion where I earned points in a similar fashion. While it didn’t turn into a wealth of miles, six thousand miles here and there never hurt anyone, especially if all I had to do was plug my frequent flyer number into their form.

In addition, Northwest will be posting clues on mystery destinations each week. If you can figure out and submit the location, you’ll be entered in a weekly drawing to win round trips to that destination. And I have a feeling that once the clues come out you’ll be able to Google the answers you need to partake. Lets hope the fantasy destinations aren’t Haiti and Ohio.

American Airlines Introduces Hawaiian Cuisine on Island Bound Flights.

by Grant Martin on

This Monday, American Airlines introduced Hawaiian Cuisine on their mainland-Hawaii flights, inspired and created by famous chef Sam Choy. That’s right, no longer are you stuck with the standard “chicken or pasta”, now you have a variety of choices including: Macadamia Nut Pancakes, Wasabi Salmon and Island Braised Short Ribs.

Of course this only applies of you’re traveling in first class; you’ll notice that all of the meals on the PR page show nice flatware and table settings. Passengers in peasant class are still stuck paying for snacks on the long flight over the Pacific.

What’s nice about American’s change in menu for the Hawaii bound flights is reemergence of some quality in air travel. With all the cutbacks to service across the board recently, airlines are now slowly starting to reinvest in the quality of service at 30,000 feet. Be this new snack baskets on Northwest, extra perks on United or Hawaiian meals on AA, these small improvements upstairs are hopefully an indication of good times ahead in the industry.

Budget Fares from New York to Egypt

by Grant Martin on

Airfare Watchdog is reporting the latest in a string of strange USA-LON-XXX flights that are remarkably cheap for this time of year. This week, the Egyptian port of Sharm el-Sheikh is on sale from New York City for the paltry sum of about 600USD.

Availability appears to be anywhere between November and March, and AFWD has created a series of handy dandy links to help you search throughout an entire month of availability. The trick with booking this flight is to be flexible. Most dirt-cheap tickets are going to require a little bit of leeway on your part — leaving on a weekday or flying out of your way to get to where you need to be. Just remember that you’re getting a steal on airline tickets and any deal you can work out and book is a gift.

Another thing to remember is that deals like this often don’t last long. Gadling readers searching for this fare on Wednesday may already be too late; often times you may have a few hours to research, book and confirm your tickets. I won’t advocate making any snap decisions on international travel, but it may be a good idea to check the cancellation policy on your favorite booking engine’s FAQ. Many have a clause where you can cancel a ticket within 24 hours without penalty. That way you can book a ticket for you and your girlfriend from work right now and ask for her permission when you get home.

Trans-Atlantic legs appear to be mostly on British Airways, a oneworld alliance member earning you miles on American, British, Cathay and Quantas among others.

With regard to Egyptian travel, you can pay for a visa at the border (nifty postage stamp visas that you can paste into your passport yourself) for a reasonable price. Sharm el-Sheikh is a fabulous city at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula well known as a tourist destination and home to excellent scuba diving and western hobnobbery.

Don’t forget your Cipro.

Remote Control Toys and Airport Security

by Jamie Rhein on

The latest items to bear scrutiny at U.S. airports are remote-control toys. Even a child with a toy car and the battery operated gizmo that runs it might be looked at more carefully. This doesn’t mean you can’t take your toy on board, but if you have one, you could get a pat down and have your hand-carried luggage searched. A University of Florida student is partly to blame. He made a video in Arabic that he posted on You Tube explaining how to turn such a toy into a bomb detonator. Of course, the guy was also arrested in August on explosive charges.

Lest we think that it just takes one to spoil the fun for the rest of us, there are other factors that have played into this decision, although nothing specific. There hasn’t been a plan uncovered, although, in Sri Lanka and India such toys have been used to explode a bomb. If you’re worried that your car key remote, or your remote channel changer for your TV that you happen to take with you on trips might flag you, don’t. They don’t count. (see article)