Fabulous Fridays: Hot Meals On Short Flight, Bangkok Airways Can Do It!

We often hear excuses from airlines that it’s impossible to provide a proper in-flight service with decent (or any) meals on short flights, but Bangkok Airways proves them all wrong, serving a HOT meal on a 60-minute flight.

Expecting food to be served on a one hour hop between Bangkok and Phuket is something that wouldn’t even enter our mind anymore in this day and age but the award winning Thai boutique airline pulls it off.

I can’t remember when I last had a very short European or North American Economy Class flight and actually got food served, but sometimes you come across these gems in Asia, and you feel like you’ve taken a time machine back to the good old days of civility.

For this trip, I ordered an Asian Vegetarian meal as a special meal simply because I like to try these different options and also enjoy being served first. I didn’t expect Asian Vegetarian to be an indian dish but it was rather nice. The dessert was rice pudding, which was delicious.

All other guests had some miso-glazed fish and rice, plus a slice of cake as dessert. It looked rather tasty as well.

Bangkok Airways also offered juice in addition to coffee and tea. Thai Airways only offers water as a third option, so I definitely appreciated the choice of some orange juice.

Being served hot meals or at least snacks, even on short flights in Asia, is rather common, but one has to consider that Bangkok Airways is considered a full-service Boutique Airline, yet I paid only 1680 Baht (US$55) for the Bangkok-Phuket flight, including baggage and seat reservation.

While even during normal times European and North American airlines have cut back their catering in Economy Class short-haul flights (especially domestic), even Bangkok Airways and THAI appear undeterred to continue offering this even on such a brief flight of less than an hour in the air.

A few years ago, when Thai Smile was still around, I covered it as well:

Budget Carrier Thai Smile Airways Manages To Serve Hot Meal & Beverages During 55 Minute Flight – In Economy Class!

Unfortunately, Thai Airways, which took over all Thai Smile routes, discontinued the hot food service, but they still offer a snack bag with a sandwich or wrap, which is still miles better than the competition overseas.

On both trips, the entire flight was served, eaten, and then leftovers collected within 40 minutes. Talk about efficiency.

Thai is now operating their domestic flights as mainline again, so Star Gold status customers have lounge access and priority check-in. Bangkok Airways is one of my favorite airlines as they offer basic lounge access to everyone, but I usually use the Coral Lounge with my Priority Pass.

Conclusion

It’s pretty amazing that this continues to be offered, and I don’t see how the carriers can make a lot of money, considering the low prices. The price for a domestic flight in Thailand with Thai/Bangkok Airways is usually 1700-2000 Baht (a bit more for Samui).

But this shows that the arguments brought forward by the legacy airlines in the western hemisphere, why they aren’t offering any/very limited F&B anymore, are nothing but foul excuses to push through their cutbacks in order to save money, all while the fares remain the same or even go up due to reduced capacity.

On my recent intra-EU Lufthansa flight, they served water. And a Leibniz cookie. And let’s not talk about U.S. Airlines, all they have are some unhealthy snacks for sale, but at least they still have a range of non-alc beverages (at least the last time I flew U.S. domestic).

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