Inflight Special Meal

Food is the second most important thing for me to rate my in-flight experience after seat width and comfort. In the past 5 months, I flew different airlines and I got to see their variety of special meal and its service. I do not eat red meat, so I order either seafood meal or lacto-ovo vegetarian meal.

Life changed after Korea. I take this meal pre-order very seriously and I got really grumpy when I forgot to order one (sigh my recent China Airlines experience). I don't bother thinking about this meal pre-order when flying with my national carrier because they would never have pork and lamb in their options, so there will always be seafood or chicken option. By the way, I would not normally enjoy in-flight meal back home because I often travel with LCCs :P

Korean Air 

KE is my new favorite! Super wide seat, fair mileage reward, and best special meal service. I flew their A380 for my London stopover or ICN-LHR and LHR-ICN leg.

1st meal

My ICN-LHR leg was a very full flight (the only remaining seat was first class) and they had countless special meal requests. They have a very systematic way by sticking yellow sticker to passenger's seats who requested the special meal. They served different bread than the normal breakfast bun to other passengers. I opted for seafood meal this time.

I was delighted with the menu. Pasta with generous salmon. The portion of the salmon was just... Wow. Super fulfilling.

2nd service

My second meal was a different kind of fish. Man, I am really lame with fish name, but this was also a good one. Not a fan of veggie, I liked the first meal better than the second one.

fish with potato and veggie

I loved the potato! 

Now for my LHR-ICN leg, I opted for the vegetarian meal.

The flight was also full, but not many people in my area (because most of them are Koreans) requested for the special meal. I did not see the flight attendants flying with the tray of meals this time. 

first meal

I absolutely love my mac 'n cheese with broccoli and carrot. I have yet to found a good place for mac 'n cheese in Seoul sigh. I felt like this was my second best meal in almost a month, after spending time in Brazil. First best? The chicken in Sao Paulo :P basically Rio food sucks.

second meal

My second meal was a pretty salty omelet. I love mushroom and hash brown, but the mushroom was too salty. Good choice of menu though.

Another good thing about KE is they also serve snack. Standard Korean cup noodles (you have no idea, Koreans love their cup noodles THAT much), folded pizza, onigiri, nuts, and banana. Of course, I got the banana which I really hate.

LATAM Brasil

First of all... After 12 hours of flying KE in A380, my LATAM flight from London to Sao Paulo was just a disaster. Cramped seats, old aircraft and unfriendly flight attendants... The list goes on but lets just focus on the food.

LHR-GRU leg

LATAM does not have seafood option so I am stuck with lacto-ovo. They did not check nor confirm my order with me before hand. The flight attendant almost served the normal meal to me until I asked for my vegetarian meal. So I did not get my meal ahead of others too. Only one service, mac 'n cheese, standard deal with a plain taste. 

My next leg on LATAM was a slightly better GRU-LHR.

First meal

I love that they served real vegetarian food this time! They have soy meat with Brazil rice. I should say 'Brazil rice' because it was not the sticky rice like what I normally eat in Asia. Match the taste, fair taste. I like the cracker snack too.

second meal

My second meal was a bread with spinach and egg filling plus fruits. I am sure this dish has a fancy name, but I just don't know haha. I am not a fan of spinach but this was a good one. The fruits were also nice, I appreciated it more than salad. 

Thai Airways

Thanks to Thai Airways recent huge promo and AirAsia's weirdly expensive price, I got to fly from ICN to BKK via HKG with Thai for the first time. I know it was not the most efficient route, but as a student, I have more time than money :P

I ordered seafood meal for both legs. The flight was relatively quiet and the flight attendant kindly came to me to confirm my order, few mins before they closed the door.

Fun fact: I just nodded even before he finished the sentence because he was speaking in Thai and he thought I was Thai :))

ICN-HKG, Pasta!

I got pasta with fish and cream sauce and a very pleasant sashimi salad.

I never ate raw fish before, really.This one was my first and it was actually nice.

HKG-BKK

I got an oriental style pasta for my next leg. Orzo (yeay!) with fried fishballs and cream. What was unique here is the tofu dessert. This was also really good, I don't know which one I like better. Wow, great job TG!

Oh, they also gave me special nuts with berries with my seat number written on it. They gave nuts to other passengers, though. Not sure why they have a different kind paired to the seafood meal order.

Now for my route back to ICN.

I was not in my best mood after the check in drama. Their system went down for almost 30 mins in their own base. I was really tired and although they sent me to the business class immigration gate to skip the queue, another drama happened.

ICN-BKK Seafood meal

The meal failed to cheer me up. It was a seafood platter (squid, small shrimp and a chunk of fish) with potato and green peas. Korean touch of Kimchi was added. The bread did not taste fresh and warm that night.

Still, better than LATAM. *everything is wrong with LATAM*

Then I forgot to order seafood meal on my recent China Airlines flights so let's keep that for next time. *grumpy*

Overall, KE is still the best with their system in handling the special meal request. I also get my food ahead of others by ordering special meal, except in LATAM. I love Asian airlines for their hospitality and their food certainly didn't fail me. I think the only non-Asian airlines that I have ever flown with are only LATAM and Aer Lingus. I did not like my Aer Lingus meal since... I did not eat them. I regretted my stupidity back then by ordering Kosher food instead of vegetarian so I ended up with sandwich that I could not eat :))

Sriwijaya Air Business Class : Worth But...

On May 26, 2013 I finally tried the business class of Sriwijaya Air on flight SJ 593 Makassar/Ujung Pandang (UPG) - Jakarta (CGK).

I'm not an aviation geek but I'm a passionate writer so I decided to post a review.

As a business class passenger, we got access to the Blue Sky Executive Lounge. The lounge was incredibly nice compared to average airport lounge in Indonesia but still can't beat the Garuda Executive Lounge at Soekarno Hatta yet. In Sultan Hasanuddin Airport, there was no special counter for business class passenger but it was no trouble because the queue was not bad and I know that they only have 8 seats for business class.

At the time of boarding, one officer picked us at the lounge and brought us to the airplane. As usual, we didn't transfer from the terminal to the airplane using the platform bus but business class passenger car.

The aircraft was Boeing 737-800 named Kepercayaan (trust). It looked relatively new for Sriwijaya Air as they mainly use ex-aircrafts. I checked on planespotters, the aircrafts is currently the youngest (in age) fleet of Sriwijaya. The oldest is 25 years old baby, Cantik.

I like how the flight attendants greet you with their unique greeting. They were nice and friendly too. Smile all the time, have a good manner and polite.

nice space, new seat

I surprised with the new seats. The last time I boarded on Sriwijaya, the seats were old and ... can I say ugly? But this time it looked fresh and comparatively clean for this airlines's standard.

panel on seat, kinda dusty

seat

What always bother me on every Sriwijaya flight is their cleanliness. Most of the time you can easily find annoying dust (because they really ruined the look) or small trashes on their carpet. This time I spotted a red  candy plastic inside the brochure/newspaper stand. Not to mention the dusty armrests and panel.

There was no in-flight entertainment. I don't know if this apply to all Sriwijaya fleets or not.

today's inflight meal with choices of chicken or fish

Mom already took the grapes from the fruit bowl

The inflight meal was decent. It's Philippine Airlines economy standard but okay laa. We got sweet steamed cakes, bread and jam and of course nasi (rice) + grapes. My mom asked for fruits platter but they gave grapes instead. Only grapes, I mean. Plus point, now they have milk! I didn't get to drink on my last flight to Singapore by Sriwijaya because they didn't have milk that time hahahaha.

I slept for the half journey and when I woke up, I realized that someone put a blanket on me. My bro said it was the male FA. My question is, why don't they give us blanket at the first place so we can feel warm earlier? The blanket size was also unique. It cannot cover your upper arm till your feet because it was pretty short. Unless you sleep like a cat hahaha.

When we finally landed and parked safely, one of the attendants asked the ground staff about the car that supposed to pick business class passenger. I didn't hear what the response was but the car was just not available so yeah, we socialized (say it with style! hahaha) and used the regular bus.

The most upsetting time was when we waited for our baggage. We only got two checked-in luggage and we expected to get our luggage fast with the priority tag but yeah, we had to wait as well. Some ground staffs helped us in finding our luggage sih, so we just had to stand near the collect point.

Overall, it was a nice standard flight that worth the price (regular price for this sector estimated $210). I definitely would fly Sriwijaya Air again with this aircraft. One main point, Sriwijaya should always control the cleanliness of their fleets. I normally choose other airlines over Sriwijaya mainly because of my past experiences spotting trash and dust. Come on, they have good customer service, nice and friendly staff/attendants, competitive price, in-flight meal (it's becoming rare and expensive these days, thanks to LCC) and flexible baggage. It's too bad to lose customer on cleanliness standard when they're almost perfect in other aspects.

My suggestion is to add dessert or cold cakes, because this is always my expectation on any flights. So far I only found dessert in Garuda Indonesia business class (for domestic route, international route always give dessert laah). Fruit platter should be always available as well. I have no complain on the attendants nor the whole experience because we only paid for economy class, he he he.