Airline offering £390 meals on parked planes for travel-starved customers

Plane food often doesn't have the best reputation.

In-flight meals typically consist of congealed breakfasts, rock-hard bread rolls and tasteless dinners.

But the offerings on Japanese airline All Nippon Airways couldn't be more different to the usual unappetising meals handed out by flight attendants.

ANA has been serving foie gras, crabmeat mousse and wagyu beef fillet onboard its stationary planes for $540 (£390).

The airline launched its 'restaurant with wings' for just a single day on Wednesday (March 31), however the demand was so high, it's planning to expand the offering.

The restaurant offered either first class or business class meals usually served on international flights.

Before a faux flight, 'passengers' boarding a Boeing 777 at Tokyo's Haneda airport were given tickets designed to look like boarding passes.

According to ANA, the experience also included crew announcements, with meals served in cabin seats, though seat belts were not required.

Prices were 59,800 yen (£390/$540) for first-class meals and 29,800 yen (£195/$269) for a business class offering.

"The tickets for the restaurant sold out in a day," said a spokeswoman told AFP.

The company is now reportedly planning an additional 11 dates.

The airline said it could even extend the service further if Covid restrictions are not tightened.

The 'restaurant' is observing Covid measures by using only 60 seats on the plane to ensure customers can maintain some distance between them.

This isn't the first Asian airline to offer meals aboard grounded planes to travel-starved customers.

Hundreds of diners ate lunch and watched seat-back films on two parked Singapore Airlines jets in October last year, with tickets selling for up to Sg$642 ($470/£340).

ANA has also been selling airline meals online – and British Airways recently followed suit.

BA now offers a cook-at-home meal kit so would-be passengers can make their own first-class dining experience in their own house.

Meal Kit prices start from £80 and they serve two. Customers can choose vegetarian, fish and meat dishes.

Dishes in the kits include Loch Fyne smoked salmon with mustard dressing, slow-cooked British beef cheeks in herb jus with chimichurri and kidderton ash cheeses with fig chutney.

ANA has been hit hard by Covid-related travel restrictions, just like most airlines.

Back in January, upheld its forecast for a record $4.9billion (£3.5billion) net loss this financial year to March 2021, compared with 27.6billion yen (£180million/$249million) in net profit the previous year.

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