Air India clarifies on vegetarian meals row

“As a non-vegetarian can have a vegetarian meal but not the other way round, the decision was logical”, the report quoted an AI official said. “There will be no tea or coffee service in lunch/dinner flight”, the circular issued by Air India’s general manager (cabin crew) DX Pais said.

The airline company clarified it is only upgrading the current cold vegetarian snacks to proper hot vegetarian meals.

Flights on busy sectors like Mumbai-Delhi and Mumbai-Bangalore are likely to be affected most by Air India’s latest decision.

While Air India has defended the move saying it has upgraded the meals, a travel industry expert said the decision is unilateral. “We have, in fact, upgraded and improved the meals”.

“Airlines world over carry out customer surveys before taking such decisions”. “On Air India’s short duration flights, those between 60 and 90 minutes, snacks such as sandwiches and cakes were served”.

Air India had flown 1.18-million passengers with a market share of 16.2 per cent in the previous month.

In a bid to attract more passengers to the debt-ridden Air India, Ministry of Civil Aviation has now chose to launch in-flight meals on its short halt flights. Hot meal is served only to executive class passengers on flights up to duration of 61-90 minutes.

In a statement, Air India said, “There will be a review after obtaining passengers’ feedback”.

The logic behind only serving meal is that a flight clocking between 6o to 90 minutes provides the crew a window of 30 to 40 minutes to serve passengers and the time available for service does not permit the crew to offer passengers the option of choosing a meal.