Monday, July 21, 2008

Crew meals

Yesterday I talked about passenger catering so today I'll talk about our crew catering (shown here at left). This has got to be a huge expense for any private airline. In some of the bigger cities, the delivery charges for just bringing out the food can be significant. The food, on the whole, is very well prepared and presented. It is also usually more exotic than what I get at home. Fruit cups often include mango or kiwi. Desserts, my downfall, are usually freshly baked (my personal favorite: lemon squares). The one side dish we get that I don't understand: toast. Pretty hard to reheat toast....

Yesterday morning we left late enough to get breakfast at the hotel. We had our lunch delivered to the airport where we spent the night - a ski resort in California. Our first leg was pretty short, just a reposition so we stored our meals in a closet until we had time to eat them. Then a cross country flight, where well packed meals that fit easily on your lap are much appreciated. Eating makes those five hour legs go by more quickly.... Unfortunately for us, we got the wrong meals by mistake. They were obviously made for a crew that had already departed, but because ours hadn't been delivered yet, they were the only ones there. My partner enjoyed a roast beef sandwich, while I ate the PB&J. I love PB&J, and it got me thinking: what other countries enjoy these customarily american sandwiches?

And one more picture - just in case you've never seen a picture of what ski runs look like when it's NOT winter. Looks like green trails running down the side of the mountain. I went to Vail once in the summer and there was still plenty to do. They still had a couple of the lifts running so people could hike down the ski runs. All the workers in orange that you see here were eager to get us going because they were trying to repave the ramp. We taxied out to the end of the runway and tried to call on the Oakland Center frequency to get our clearance (there was no tower). No one could hear us on the radio over the mountains, so we had to taxi BACK to the ramp and call for our clearance to takeoff where we knew they could hear us. Another one of those "inconveniences" we have to deal with on this job. I'm not complaining. I am still on a honeymoon working here!

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