a bowl of food next to a bowl of food

Two recent stories about foreign objects in airline meals provide an important reminder: always examine your airline meal before eating it.

Maggots And Blades? Why You Should Always Double-Check Your Airline Meal Before Biting It

First up, a metal blade. On June 9, 2024, a business class passenger found a metal-like object in his chaat (a savory, crispy fried-dough wafer) while traveling on AI175 from Bengaluru (BLR) to San Francisco (SFO).

After a few spoons of the chaat, I felt something hard, something metallic, inside my mouth. I spat it out into the bowl. It was a blade!

Obviously, I complained to the stewardess who spoke for four-five seconds. The conversation went something like: Sorry about this and we will inform the catering team. She returned with a bowl of chickpea salad.

He posted about his flight on Twitter:

Air India responded a few days later, offering him a free one-way business class ticket on any flight:

“We value our relationship and would request you to accept our goodwill offer of a one-way business class ticket across any Al flight, redeemable within one year of issuance. We look forward to your response and would request you to look at this incident in isolation, giving us the opportunity to serve you to a better experience the next time you travel with us.”

With generous compensation like that, I’d imagine others will “find” blades in their meals…

To Air India’s credit, it even explained where the foreign object came from:

“Air India confirms that a foreign object was found in the meal of a guest aboard one of our flights. After investigation, it has been identified as coming from the vegetable processing machine used at the facilities of our catering partner. We have worked with our catering partner to strengthen measures to prevent any recurrence, including more frequent checking of the processor, especially after chopping of any hard vegetable.”

Next, a United passenger found maggot-like creature in his economy class pasta dish on a flight from Australia, posting the images on reddit:

The whole world of quality control and cleanliness in catering facilities or most restaurants is something that I choose not to think about, much like how a sausage is made. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

But the guy on Air India bit into a blade and he is fortunate he did not injure himself.

Bottom line: always examine your food before eating it, especially on an airplane.

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