Thursday 14 January 2010

My Quickest Meal at 30,000 Feet


In an earlier post, I described how plane rides can be somewhat enjoyable. However, you don't have to worry about enjoying your ride when it ends pretty soon after it begins. Because that's what happened to a friend and I on an early morning Jet Airways flight from Bangalore to Mangalore last January.



                                   Looks delicious, doesn't it?

Breakfast was served around ten minutes into the flight, and we had just begun unwrapping our food, and I my camera, when the captain announced, to everyone's surprise, that we would be landing in three minutes. The flight attendants hadn't even finished serving all the passengers! I saw one attendant run to the captain's cabin immediately after the announcement, perhaps to ask him to ease off.

It was all I could do to take a couple of pics of the meal and then join my pal in wolfing down the breakfast like our lives depended on it. Which was a pity really since it wasn't a bad meal and would have been worth spending more time over. We did of course finish eating and the air hostesses did clear up about just a minute before landing, but I still don't get why they couldn't have just served everyone sooner, seeing as how they should have known the flight would only be 20 minutes.

As for us, managing to finish breakfast in time actually made us feel somewhat triumphant, like we had overcome a challenge. And we reached Mangalore quickly. A train from Bangalore would have been an overnight affair, and I doubt I'd have gotten much sleep. In fact, had I known the flight would be so short, I might not have bothered with my motion sickness pills.

I hear flights between Mumbai and Pune are even shorter. Have any interesting short flight or airplane food stories of your own that you'd like to share?


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9 comments:

Vineeta said...

The food looks yummy to me coz its lunch time for me nw :P but atleast Jet Airways provides with free breakfast.. other airlines charge for water too :(

btw.. I had not so interesting incident in flight. Here it goes..
http://vineetazdiary.blogspot.com/2009/11/tit-for-tat.html?showComment=1258836634314#c6197677747642652847

Daniel D'Mello said...

Jet Airways has pretty decent breakfasts. This was the second time I've taken one of their early morning flights. It's JetLite that you need to be careful about, or any other low cost carrier - you have to pay extra for food.

I read your post about the disgruntled Israeli man before. Very funny.

Anonymous said...

The food was great! I'm glad they still served us, despite the short trip.

Daniel D'Mello said...

Thank you Anonymous :-)

Hari said...

The food looks delicious and definitely made me feel hungry. Back in the US they have stopped serving meals as a cost cutting measure. You have to buy them inflight if you want and it can cost over $5.00.

Daniel D'Mello said...

Wow, that's a lot of money for an airplane meal. It's pretty much the same here. On low cost carriers, a sandwich costs over Rs. 100. Scandalous!

Maya Rao said...

On the list of short flights - Delhi - Chandigarh aboard a 8-10 seater, with propellers that required a mechanic to start them rolling.

Daniel D'Mello said...

8-10 seater. Sounds cosy. Must have been a quick flight. Hope to see some posts on your blog soon.

zubin patel said...

lol...ya u could hav done without d motion sickness pills...

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