What can we do for cabin crew...

[Sumudu]

In researching the possibility of Ground airline caterers preparing certain items for the cabin crew before they board the aeroplane, I recently asked, what would Cabin Crew like Ground Caterers to do, in a online Cabin Crew Forum, in order to obtain feedback from a much wider audience of cabin crew. The idea was to get views, suggestions & thoughts from the online Cabin Crew community, to cut down on the amount of work crew have to do when they initially board the aircraft.

After about a week's posting in the Forum, the replies I had received are quite simple and straight forward !

What such as the caterers load the carts on and make sure its all there, make sure the seat back pockets are all done etc?

Ha, try loading the correct number of meals! Or try doubling the number of crew meals and trays... for all those pax who end up with our dinner as there wasnt one loaded for em! (my company won't over cater!)

Still smiling... but the pain is setting in!

Not bang on the door whilst pax are still disembarking!!! It's SOOO annoying as we cannot open the door until pax have disembarked but they keep thumping the door like we can't hear them!!! It reeeeeeeeaally gets to me!!!

Although the number of replies to my post haven't been good as I expected, from the above replies, we can see, if we - the airline caterers, do our bit of proper planning of the flight catering food/equipment sets at the kitchen before loading and if we keep & maintain up to loading times and also perhaps, if we do an efficient & effective crew hand over of the catering, with out much effort we would be able to meet our Cabin Crew expectations on board

[Sumudu]

Today, quite simply, we started carrying out a full flight catering product check, from tiny toothpick to meal trolley @ the Catering Unit. Any shortages what so ever (actually, there were none) marked outside the trolley or/and container box. All trolleys and containers were properly labeled indicating contents inside - all handwritten labels though! All most all meal trays and hot entries were checked for both spec and for the right quantity, before loading. Blankets as well as children's toys were counted and Magazines & newspapers were all in order. So as the other service equipment needed for the cabin crew for the service like Silver Trays, caviar bowls and stuff. Finally, all catering stuff were loaded on the aircraft on time. The Catering Supervisor went on board, just to give the 'thumbs up
I guess, for the 1st time..... when cabin crew got on board, we told them that they don't have to carry out their usual 'Galley/Meal Checks' and they can just get on with their mandatory safety/sec checks and get the passengers on board. They were overwhelmed

Yes! we did it - 100% thorough catering checks @ the Flight Kitchen before loading them on to the aeroplane, so cabin crew did not have to do any galley/meal checks and as a result they save time ! We requested crew who operated the flight to let us know how it all went, when they complete their flight. Let's wait & see, fingers crossed. In any case, we'll learn from any mistakes and improve our checks at the Flight Kitchen and do even better as we go along I have to say, its still its infancy and we hope to be able to do even more for our cabin crew in the future ! Watch this SPACE

Very Many Thanks to all those who were involved - both my internal colleagues as well as our colleagues from our Partner Company !