Food on airplanes
 

Thanks everyone for all your posts regarding my previous question about pickpockets on airplanes. Now I have a new question. Do the airlines require you to eat the food they serve or is it ok to take your own preprepared meals with you to eat? If so, will the flight attendents heat your food for you (in the galley microwave ovens)or will they refuse that service? And, what about milk/formula for infants, will they heat that up for the passengers?

No, the airlines do not require you to eat the food they serve.

Yes, you may take your own food onto the plane.

No, the flight attendants will most likely not heat the food you brought on board for you.

Yes, they will probably heat infant formula for you.

Even if you're hungry and you actually want to eat the food, the cabin crew waits until you're asleep to serve it, and when you wake up they're all in the back room eating your food. So, in a nutshell, they absolutely have no time to heat the food you bring with you, because they're too busy eating your food or spending time in the only toilet left that works.

The flight attendents pick you pockets while they serve your food.

If you don't eat the required airline food they give you a lecture about the starving children in China.

They do not heat your food in a micowave. If you ask for warm food they will sit on it for at least five minutes.

Flight attendents will not heat up formula but most are willing to breast feed your infant.

I bet anything: the next question will be how much to tip the crew!

Okay, we have established that I can bring my own salami sandwich. But where is it written that I can't bring my own chianti to wash it down with?

janeg:

I can't answer your question literally. But most European, American and Antipodean airlines I've used have a rule, often citing a regulation they claim to have been made by their own government, that forbids the use of alcohol except when provided by them.

They cite two arguments: the need to protect passengers, crew and plane from extreme drunks, and regulations around duty-free.

Like most things in life, the enforcement of this rule will doubtless depend on the frame of mind of a given crew on a given day.

put your chianti in a cranberry juice bottle (and likewise vodka in a water bottle)

The last time I flew, the flight attendant told me that I wouldn't get any dessert if I didn't eat all my vegetables.

Please do not bring any of that dreadful Stilton cheese on board like you did the last time...it stank so much we thought they had moved the lavatory to the row you were in.

That was cheese? I thought they had just taken their shoes off.

Speaking of taking shoes off. I took my shoes off on a flight and another passenger said "Oh good, Chelupas!" I'm serious this time.

I think the idea of them "forcing you to eat the food" is so funny. Actually a lot of people thought seat belts were for safety, but instead they are there so that you are strapped down making it easier for the attendants to force feed those pesky flyers who refuse to eat the food.