Worst in-flight meal you've received?

[DC3]

I like terms like 'Mystery Meat', when I was in the defence force sometimes we used to items on the menu listed as 'Chicken Surprise' or 'Beef Surprise', we were just surprised if these items contained any chicken or beef.

Maybe serving Chef's Surprise on some airlines? Likewise containing probably no (or inedible) protein.

 

[JohnK]

I love the salads!! You appear to fly way more than I do so perhaps I've just been lucky!

Some salads are quite nice. Some salads are almost inedible. I guess it depends on your tastes.

 

[oz_mark]

Worst? Hands down Pesto Penne Pasta with Pumpkin. I'm sure serfty suffered the meal as well

 

[luxury-lizard]

Wow - you guys are lucky - I've had so many bad meals in both Y and J, I can't possibly list all of them; however, the rock bottom are 2 times I got food poisoning - Martinque to New York (AF in Y) - fish - I was sick for days; another time was Toronto to AMS in J on AC - pheasant - again sick for days.

 

[jenib]

A colleague of mine was once served a nice Y meal on a domestic QF flight. However, when he unwrapped it there was a fly buzzing around inside. He did receive a couple of bottles of wine and a $50 voucher for the uuuurrrggghh moment though

 

[TomVexille]

Wow - you guys are lucky - I've had so many bad meals in both Y and J, I can't possibly list all of them; however, the rock bottom are 2 times I got food poisoning - Martinque to New York (AF in Y) - fish - I was sick for days; another time was Toronto to AMS in J on AC - pheasant - again sick for days.

Oh there's been plenty of bad meals, just that AF was the worst

 

[Flying Fox]

Worst domestic meal, was a recent Qantas mid arvo flight MEL-SYD where only offering was carrot and celery sticks with hummus which I decline, give me pretzels or a cookie never celery.

IMHO - celery is never a meal, its barely food.

And technically since its 95% water, it should be considered a drink at best

 

[juddles]

As per others, I do not have photos, but I have an excuse for this - was about 40 years ago when cameras were a special thing

I was a child, travelling from Australia to Chile. Everything was long then (many stops) but even then we did this the long way - from Australia to the USA then down via Brazil and Argentina to get to Chile. And it was in economy - back then travel was exceptional even in Y, premium cabins were for the uber rich.

I had done similar travel before, but for some reason the planets coincided so that on EVERY single flight the only meal choice left was chicken. I do like chicken but three days of only this can jade even the devout.

On the last flight, EZE (Buenos Aires) to SCL (Santiago, Chile) yet agian the meal was chicken. But it was not the chicken I thought of when reading this thread. On that flight there was, on the meal tray, next to the chicken, a steaming pile of some shredded green thing that amazed me.

To this day, I have pondered over this, yet I still cannot decide if this green thing was spinach or seaweed. I do love spinach, I also enjoy seaweed. But this pile defied my comprehension. Many things point to a spinach conclusion - in those days fancy things were not the norm - I think back then Neil Perry was still inspiring haircuts and not cuisine. Likewise things from the sea had not yet had their nutritional qualities identified.

But i recall very clearly that I very carefully examined/tasted/tested this thing on my plate. For most of the flight. (nothing else to do - no such thing as IFE then)

And my conclusion at the end was simple. I resigned to the fact that I would never resolve the mystery as to the real identity, but I also realised that there could be not ever anything so bad offerred to me as "food". Now, so many years later, I have had to eat things from armadillo to bad tripe, but this green monster is the only thing that manages to haunt my dreams........

 

[jase05]

Plenty of poor quality dishes on MU and CS on domestic trips in Y and J but I still don’t think it comes close to some of the garbage BA serve up for their Club Europe service. I reckon 6 or 7 out of 10 times it’s barely edible but the last 3 times we have got food I wouldn’t serve to dogs and promptly returned it. LHR-CDG was a selection of sandwiches that I swear were that soggy you could have squeezed them like a sponge followed with some crackers and cheese that I think was from the Crusades, it was that rock hard. We were offered a Luke warm mini can of Sprite though

 

[lowan74]

Flying in J on MU from SYD to PEK via HGH last December the food was really poor, in presentation, taste and lack of choice. See below main course, which was worse than it looks... I tried this flight with a sense of adventure on the QF codeshare as I wanted to try something different, but it really wasnt good at all. It was a prawn dish.

 

[Hoffsare]

Plenty of bad ones, but the most memorable edible item I have received was a QF back from LAX and they served one of those mango Weiss bars. It was so incredibly frozen - it was impossible to penetrate with teeth for at least 15 minutes. I've always wondered how they achieved this level of extreme freezing. Is there a cryo freezing cylinder in the galley? My tongue got stuck to it like it was the frozen pole in that scene from Dumb and Dumber.

 

[flyingfan]

Plenty of bad ones, but the most memorable edible item I have received was a QF back from LAX and they served one of those mango Weiss bars. It was so incredibly frozen - it was impossible to penetrate with teeth for at least 15 minutes. I've always wondered how they achieved this level of extreme freezing. Is there a cryo freezing cylinder in the galley? My tongue got stuck to it like it was the frozen pole in that scene from Dumb and Dumber.

Those ice creams are always served incredibly frozen hard, almost rocklike - maybe that's the only way they can do it and I'd rather that than drippy ice cream. Just wait 15 or 20 minutes, be patient, resist the urge to sink your teeth into that sweet treat in front of you and soon you can enjoy it. Whereas a bad savoury meal will still be bad (and probably worse, just cold too) 20 minutes later.

 

[henleybeach]

My worst meal was Business class Adl-Mel last year on board qantas. I was in 3a and by the time the meal orders got to me all the options were gone except for the cranberry walnut salad. Obviously I had no choice so I ordered the salad and when the FA came out & served it , (quoting her words)“ here is your sad looking salad”.
The lettuce wasn’t even the “fancy” lettuce like a mesclun mix, it was just iceberg lettuce that was dead set rotten. It was brown , soggy and stunk rotten. It looked like you had left lettuce in the crisper when you went on holiday for a month. The lady next to me, said that smells putrid. You wouldn’t feed it to a rabbit.

 

[RB]

I know they are only snacks but regional economy on non-city flights on both Virgin & Qantaslink are pretty ordinary

 

[Pushka]

My worst meal was Business class Adl-Mel last year on board qantas. I was in 3a and by the time the meal orders got to me all the options were gone except for the cranberry walnut salad. Obviously I had no choice so I ordered the salad and when the FA came out & served it , (quoting her words)“ here is your sad looking salad”.
The lettuce wasn’t even the “fancy” lettuce like a mesclun mix, it was just iceberg lettuce that was dead set rotten. It was brown , soggy and stunk rotten. It looked like you had left lettuce in the crisper when you went on holiday for a month. The lady next to me, said that smells putrid. You wouldn’t feed it to a rabbit.

It’s a wonder there wasn’t a gastro outbreak. Serving food like that is open to all kinds on contamination.

 

[Monya Meow Meow]

All these talk about bad food on MU has me worried...
Have a flight with them this coming Nov from Sydney to Okinawa via Shanghai in J.

Fingers crossed, will have zero expectations after reading this thread.

 

[Milboo]

I can’t actually remember what it was but I know it was on the QF flight to Santiago - in J.

Got one mouthful in and hit the call bell. Got the steak sandwich instead - barely tolerable too.

I remember landing in SCL absolutely starving.

 

[ferntree]

Does premium economy count, if the meal was worse than anything I've ever had in economy (and it was)?

Coming back from Santiago to Sydney with Qantas a few years ago, I'd pre-ordered vegetarian. Thus, I was presented with a plate of boiled white rice, boiled potatoes and boiled green peas. That was it.

 

[serfty]

Worst? Hands down Pesto Penne Pasta with Pumpkin. I'm sure serfty suffered the meal as well

Yip - coming up to 9 years ago:

---

And I got nothing, not even a reply, over the said pumpkin penne pasta pesto meal or whatever it was.

Oct 2010 ...

Good thing I had some NPPP in the lounge, as they were more enjoyable than the 'meal' on the flight back to MEL.

Agree about the poor catering. :-|

"Penne with Pesto sauce and oven roasted vegetables"!! (Penne with about two teaspoons of a green looking gravy with limp carrots and a few other bits of vegeis - IMHO tasteless!)

Aside from being airline food; If I want a vegetarian "meal" I would have requested one. (Apologies to all those vegans out there)

Not much moves me on this level (I mean it is "only" airline food); but I am going to register a complaint to Qantas about this ...

... and I did

 

[Berlin]

What a great thread! The two worst examples from memory were Thai serving a very "authentic" Fish head curry which none of the Westerners on this plane tried (but plenty of Thais did).

And then there was this breakfast thing which Fiji Airways (back then Air Pacific) were infamous for. It was something of the shape of an Egg McMuffin burger but stone-hard and wrapped in plastic. I think it was actually even meant to be something similar to an Egg McMuffin but the strange smelly greyish substance inside of it was the worst 'Egg' ever. I'm sure not the only one who ever got that one offered as it used to be pretty much the standard food on morning flights in Y (no idea if they still have it, been in J last two times I've flown them).

And a special prize for BA with continuously the worst food in J and even F class.