They’re bored with passengers treating their planes like a Sweetgreen within the sky.
Flight attends for Lufthansa Airlines have proposed charging flyers for special meals, saying they’ve been inundated by an “excessive amount” of unique menu requests.
“We’re aware of the problem that the staff representatives for cabin crew complain about too many special meals being ordered,” representatives for the German carrier told Business Insider in an announcement.
Indeed, boutique dining requests, which regularly involve health and non secular considerations, are sky high — quite literally.
A cabin crew representative claimed in a letter that that as much as 190 passengers now order special menu options on each long-haul flight, German flight news site Aero Telegraph reported.
Previously, it was common for crew to cope with around 100 special requests.
This sheer volume is allegedly overwhelming for the airline, which already offers 11 different special options, including low-sodium, vegan, and Kosher meals.
Distributing these can understandably be time consuming, potentially leading to flight attendants neglecting other duties similar to ensuring passenger safety, per the letter.
As such, the flight attendant rep floated several “corrective measures” aimed toward curbing the trend. Most controversial amongst these was imposing a special meal fee, which they hope would curtail the variety of requests.
Other proposed solutions included limiting the variety of special meal options per flight or restricting the choice to options which can be obviously religion or health-related.
Additionally they proposed designating “special meal” requirements on passenger boarding passes in an effort to avoid “infinite discussions” inflight, Aero Telegraph reported.
The rep claimed that they had broached the subject with the brass in 2017, but nothing was done. This led them to consider that there was no “interest in really seriously solving this issue.”
Lufthansa representatives recently addressed the problem in an announcement, claiming they were fully aware of their employees’ gripes. Nonetheless, they didn’t specify whether or not they were going to try to resolve the problem.
“The range of special meals and the associated on-board service processes, like other product and repair topics, are often examined and further developed,” said the rep.
