Japan's All Nippon Airways offers £390 meals on parked planes

Posted on : 04/01/2021
Japan's All Nippon Airways offers £390 meals on parked planes
Travel 

Sky-high: Japanese airline offers £390 meals on PARKED PLANES, with foie gras and wagyu beef fillet on the menu (and the experience includes crew announcements)

  • All Nippon Airways launched its ‘restaurant with wings’ for just a single day
  • But with demand proving sky-high, it is now planning to expand the offering 
  • Business-class meals cost £195 ($269), first-class are charged at £390 ($540) 

Airline food might be one of the last things people are missing during the pandemic, but one Japanese carrier has customers flocking to sample luxury in-flight meals on its parked planes.

Foie gras, crabmeat mousse and wagyu beef fillet are all on the menu aboard aircraft belonging to Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) – for a cool $540 (£390).

The airline launched its ‘restaurant with wings’ for just a single day on Wednesday, but with demand proving sky-high, it is now planning to expand the offering.

Foie gras, crabmeat mousse and wagyu beef fillet are all on the menu aboard aircraft belonging to Japan’s All Nippon Airways – for a cool $540 (£390) 

The restaurant offered either first class or business class meals usually served on international flights, with ‘passengers’ boarding a Boeing 777 at Tokyo’s Haneda airport holding tickets designed to look like boarding passes.

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

Demand appears strong, despite the prices – 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,’ a spokeswoman told AFP on Thursday, and the company now plans an additional 11 dates.

All Nippon Airways launched its ‘restaurant with wings’ for just a single day on Wednesday, but with demand proving sky-high, it is now planning to expand the offering

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

The ‘restaurant’ already observes virus measures, using only 60 seats on the plane to ensure customers can maintain some distance between them.

The Japanese carrier is not the first Asian airline to offer meals aboard grounded planes to travel-starved customers.

Hundreds of travel-starved 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).

‘Passengers’ boarded a Boeing 777 at Tokyo’s Haneda airport holding tickets designed to look like boarding passes. Pictured is an ANA crew member preparing food for the experience

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

It now offers a cook-at-home meal kit that mirrors the airline’s first-class dining experience.

MailOnline Travel was sent one to try out that contained Loch Fyne smoked salmon with mustard dressing; slow-cooked British beef cheeks in herb jus with chimichurri; golden Cenarth, black bomber, Harrogate blue and kidderton ash cheeses with fig chutney; and dark chocolate and orange liqueur bread and butter pudding with vanilla sauce. Our verdict? Exceptional.

Each meal kit costs from £80, serves two and customers can choose vegetarian, fish and meat dishes. 

Like airlines around the world, ANA has been hit hard by virus-related travel restrictions.

In January, it 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.

ANA Holdings’ nine-month net loss came to 309.6billion yen ($3billion/£2.1billion) – also a record – and a sharp drop from the 86.4billion (£566million/$780million) yen in profit it logged during the same April-December period last year.

Source: Read Full Article