BS: Calling all Air Stewards!

Subject: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 02:40 AM

I recently took a flight where I was told they had run out of my choice of meal and would I select an alternative? Well, that happens. But what intrigues me is how they came to the decision that I was the one to lose out when plenty of others got it. I presume it is to do with seat number (which was fairly high), but there were a couple of higher numbered rows and someone in those had the chosen meal.

So here's the question: what seat numbers should I choose to maximise the chances my meal choice is available? Is it always the lowest numbered row? Does it vary by airline? Is it some 'snake-like' pattern where seats in the centre are disadvantaged compared to window seats?

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 02:51 AM

I wonder if they merely pick someone who looks congenial and pleasant, who won't kick up a stink if they don't get the correct meal? If so, try to look like an absolute tartar, and you may get what you ordered.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 02:58 AM

I used to fly with a cheapie airline called Afriqiya (based in Tripoli but now defunct I expect) They gave you the option of adding a meal to your ticket, an extra £15. I always turned down this option, fortunately. On one overnight flight to Accra, these strange cardboard boxes were given out. People hungrily opened them and the most terrible stench of rotten fish engulfed the cabin. {People were actually vomiting it was so ghastly.) I stuck my head into the hood of my 'travelling jacket' and smiled quietly as the stewards hastily collected the stinking boxes up and disposed of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 04:30 AM

One wouldn't know. One tends to eat from a different menu in the front portion of the plane dontcha know?

(If you are the meek don't want to cause trouble type, it helps when they are looking for people to upgrade when economy is overbooked.)

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 04:48 AM

Never managed to wangle an upgrade back in my travelling on business days - they usually looked me up and down and, I suspect, decided my travelling gear of t-shirt, jeans and trainers fell outside the required dress-code!

But, flying Cattle-Class, I did manage to get three seats together in the centre-block several times on flights to and from Houston (on Continental), which meant that I could get horizontal. Very beneficial on the long overnight homeward flight.

As I'm permanently on the See-food diet (I see food, I eat it) I just take whatever's put before me. Never been fussy, and I see no point in making a Steward's/Stewardesses shitty job worse by kicking off just because I have to eat, say, the veggie option instead of chicken. Life's too short.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 05:56 AM

One wouldn't know. One tends to eat from a different menu in the front portion of the plane dontcha know?

As it happens, I was in business class - My wife has an arthritic knee so the extra space is worth it for her, and I have to tag along, don't I? *smile*. They did offer an upgrade to first when we checked in, but I thought the extra £400 each was a tad unjustifiable.

I did wonder whether I had the option for choosing the economy class meal ... but as Backwoodman said, I saw no point in making the Stewardesses' job worse. And that's why I didn't ask her why I was picked, since it's hard to get the distinction being it being an interesting question and a complaint.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 06:00 AM

Afriqiya didn't 'do' anything but cattle class. 230 people crammed on board with your knees up to your chin. I was usually the only woman or white person on board. Me and 229 extremely tasty African men. And when you arrived in Tripoli for onward transit to Accra, there were 15 or so extremely tasty Arab men who processed the documents and herded you about. The journey was almost better than the stay. But that smelly fish was really rank. And the loos in Tripoli were 'squat' ones. Not a problem though.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 06:32 AM

Just scoff what you get as quickly as you can and put it down to experience. It's all nutrient-free in any case. If I get the choice to not buy in-flight food I always take some nice soft tuna rolls or something like that.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 07:57 AM

I always sat in Gatwick airport for a couple of hours before take-off eating good stuff such as egg or tuna sandwiches, fruit and salady things, washed down with only water. Then I'd buy a large bottle of water 'airside' and save some with which to clean my teeth once arrived at my destination in the 'bush'. On the plane I always buried my head in my trusty travelling jacket hood and slept, (having feasted my eyes on the nice Africans all around me!) That way I didn't need to eat or drink on board. Night flights are better spent like that, or your daily 'clock' gets all mixed up. At 3am in Tripoli I'd sit quietly and doze (having feasted my eyes on all the nice Arab men!) until I boarded for Ghana or wherever. Always try to eat only when you would normally at home. And avoid alcohol at all costs. (Afriqiya was a Muslim airline, so no booze anyway) Water is the best, as long as it's safely bottled.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 11:19 AM

I agree about the alcohol. A definite no-no for me on flights. On the last flight I was on I witnessed a couple in front of us purchasing and consuming a £40 bottle of lukewarm champagne from plastic glasses.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 12:29 PM

On the question of who gets what meal, I can think of a
few other possible variables that haven't been mentioned:

1 The order in which tickets were bought;
2 The order of passenger names, alphabetically;
3 The order of actual passenger boarding.

If there are several attendants distributing meals,
each delivering to a different assigned seating area,
the order in which they come to the pickup point
could be random, possibly causing distribution anomalies.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 01:03 PM

Carry several bags of peanuts to supplement the plastic food.

I used to travel a lot on business before I retired, and never worried about what they set before me. (Of course I never traveled Afriquia (sp?))

What, me worry? Life's just too short. As long as they are serving drinks-

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 01:20 PM

Afriqiya used to be a jolly good airline because it was extremely cheap and their flight seemed always to be on time. The female stewards wore a kind of veil around their heads and the food had to be halal, so fish was always a favourite (fish can be eaten by all Muslims) But after the troubles in Libya, the airline folded. It may now be resurrected. Tripoli was the hub of the wheel for all their flights to & from most African capital cities. Regarding all airline food, you risk food poisoning really because you can't be sure the individual boxes have been stored at the correct cold temp then heated up to the correct hot temp. I have a cast-iron stomach, but even I couldn't risk food poisoning when travelling to an undeveloped country. I'd be hundreds of miles from any clinic or doctor, so I was always very wary. Once arrived in the bush, the little charcoal fires cooked everything thoroughly.
I reckon there wasn't any selection by the stewards as to who went without their dinner. They just had one short due to a miscount, and it just happened to be you DMcG!

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 01:26 PM

Have just looked it up, and there's an 'h' at the end. Afriqiyah. And it looks as if it's in business once more. Hooray! (Sorry about thread drift.)

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: Brian May
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 04:36 PM

Having flown civil airliners (but on the flight deck), I've been aware of this phenomenon for years.

Sadly, it's not that scientific. The cabin crew are usually presented with the meals and quite often will start alternate ends of the aircraft on alternate legs. That doesn't help you if you can't get your choice though.

What do you think they'd rather do? Be able to give everyone their chosen meal, or have to attempt to mollify a disgruntled customer . . .

No-brainer really. Those boys and girls generally just have to suck up the complaint because there's sod all they can do about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 05:07 PM

I'm not bothered about the meal - the problem is being a mathematician! You have a matrix of points (the seats) and we can assume a continuous line joining them (the meal allocation). If we consider the set of all possible lines that go to 'adjacent' points and assume each is equally likely - even though they won't be in real life - is it possible to pick a point that maximises the probability you are at most X% of the distance from the start of a randomly chosen line from the set for various X?

That's the interesting problem, and the sort of thing I ponder while in an aircraft unable to anything more productive.

Now as I say, the actual paths are probably fairly limited and not all equally likely -   seats ABC going 'up the aisle' and then all the seats DEF 'coming back', for example, seems quite a likely one whereas all A in increasing rows, then all B seats in decreasing , then all C increasing ... is pretty unlikely.

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 05:10 PM

Or to simplify the problem to real life: if I have a free choice of seats, which should I pick to maximise the chance I get the meal I want?

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Apr 14 - 07:50 PM

Then there is the third choice--- abandoned long ago-

Coffee, tea or

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Apr 14 - 01:00 AM

"Or to simplify the problem to real life: if I have a free choice of seats, which should I pick to maximise the chance I get the meal I want?"

The pilot's seat :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 14 Apr 14 - 04:14 PM

Presumably, like British Airways - my preferred airline they still have stewardesses?

Subject: RE: BS: Calling all Air Stewards!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Apr 14 - 04:18 PM

Bonzo, didn't you know? Sex is being eliminated.