As Veganuary winds up, one popular airline is keen to continue the veg-curious momentum, doubling down on vegan cuisine for its inflight menu across all cabins and lounge offerings. This vegan traveller hopes the move will raise the bar for plant-based flyers.
Vegan inflight meals generally range from the meagre to the meh, so Emirates’ focus on plant-based cuisine is a refreshing change that taps into growing global demand.
The Gulf carrier serves more than 40,000 plant-based meals on board flights to all 140 destinations per year and in 2024, it saw vegan meal consumption soar in line with passenger volumes.
Regions such as Africa, South-East Asia and the Middle East exceed passenger growth and many Emirates cabin crew also follow a plant-based diet.
Emirates also reports that 30,000 Economy and Premium Economy passengers per month select plant-based milk for their coffee and tea after individual servings were introduced in these cabin classes recently.
Note: Vegan meals are still classified as special dietary meals, so you’ll need to book at least 24 hours ahead of your flights to secure your plant-based cuisine options.
New vegan cuisine
Emirates will offer brand-new vegan dishes across all cabin classes and lounges, including dedicated inflight kids’ meals like vegan pizza, fajitas, muffins and desserts.
Economy passengers can enjoy vegetable crêpes, curried vegetable puffs and chocolate mousse cake – a far cry from a solo banana – while Premium Economy vegan dishes include five-spice braised mushrooms and chocolate tarts.
Business Class customers can expect Thai red curry tofu, coconut pineapple cakes and chocolate pecan cakes, while First Class vegan offerings include creamy polenta cakes with thyme mushroom ragout, aubergine curry and decadent desserts.
Emirates chefs have added to their already impressive roster of 300-plus vegan recipes to develop new dishes using innovative ingredients, such as a solid egg substitute made from legumes and a vegan pastry sheet.
It follows the airline’s use of other high-quality plant-based products, including Beyond Meat, Linnolat organic dark vegan chocolate and Pantai Thai vegan curry paste.
In addition, Emirates passengers can savour vegan cuisine from grab-and-go snacks to a la carte breakfasts and its most popular dish, the Emirates Green Burger, across 11 premium Dubai lounges.
For more info, head to emirates.com