Onboard Dining: Pot Luck

Posted in A Day in the Life of a Flight Attendant | 1 comment

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For the last few months I’ve had a lock on Cancun flying from Los Angeles, bringing everyone to their spanish holidays. Don’t get too excited, they’re not overnights – just transcon turns. But, I love them. The folks senior to me don’t seem to bid for them (hey! don’t get any ideas if you’re reading this!) and I think it’s easier than any other turn because the passengers are happy that they’re on their way to a vacation, and on the way home they’re hungover, sunburnt and broke – so they’re a bit mellower than the average traveler.

But, what’s really making these turns fun for me is doing them practically every week with the same crew. I don’t know how we managed to pull this off, but for the last few weeks a variation of myself, Patti and another flight attendant name Kirsten have managed to bid and hold these one day trips. For the whole month of March, we’re all on them, together – every week.

In flight attendant training you learn about CRM or Crew Resource Management and it’s basis is working together effectively while maintaining an open line of communication at all times. The three of us decided to take CRM to a whole new level.

A few weeks ago we decided to have an onboard Pot Luck. Our airline changes out our food menus every four months and after about two weeks the food becomes “old” to us since we’re around it all day, everyday, so we thought we’d bring our own fully knowing that we’d have to eat it on board since we couldn’t bring fresh food items back into the US at the end of our day.

Unfortunately Patti had to be removed from this particular trip for personal reasons but Kirsten and I continued with our plans – and made our reserve flight attendant quite happy with an onboard buffet of items that weren’t created by LSG.

I decided to bring an antipasto salad, which I knew would pair well with the linguine in white clam sauce that Kirsten was bringing. Her dish was amazing. The fact that she was able to figure out how to package it, put it together and cook it on board was also a sight to see. It only took her about 20 minutes to get it plated and served.

Now for the month of March the three of us fly together 4 times and we’re thinking of other dishes we can bring while we dish on the jumpseats. Any thoughts on food that’s easy to cook on board, but still tastes good? What have you made on board that surprised you?

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