Want the best in-flight meals? Fly on a Middle Eastern airline

Remember the last time you had a restaurant-quality meal on a flight? Likely, it was while you were seated in a cabin on a Middle Eastern carrier. 

Airlines from the region are redefining in-flight service, setting the standard for hospitality and operational excellence. 

Middle Eastern carriers dominated the top ranks of a massive survey of 27,000 passengers’ in-flight meal reviews across hundreds of airlines. They captured the top four positions for overall quality. Only one U.S. airline—JetBlue—managed to break into the top 10 at No. 7.

Second-placed Oman Air, for example, offers seared crusted tuna and gruyere cheese tarts in business class or business studio. Even its economy fliers enjoy options such as seared chicken with pesto sauce and braised lamb. It sure beats that mini bag of pretzels you get on most U.S. domestic flights.

How do the best airlines excel at in-flight service, despite all of the logistic challenges at 35,000 feet?

Of course, many have some built-in advantages, such as strong government support. Generally, however, superior service comes from cultivating a deep culture of hospitality, and having a laser focus on efficiency and performance. 

It’s impossible to serve up consistently delicious in-flight meals without a finely-tuned, highly efficient logistical operation. Emirates, for example, serves 215,000 meals a day—or 149 per minute—with 1,400 chefs working around the clock to support all of its flights. Achieving the level of service that Emirates is known for, at this scale, requires massive investment in technology, systems, and facilities.

Oman Air doesn’t just have great meals, it consistently ranks as among the most punctual airlines in the world, with an on-time performance of 92%. This level of efficiency helps explain why Middle Eastern airlines are earning around $23 per passenger in profit, triple the global average. 

Middle Eastern airlines are leading the way in terms of adopting new digital tools that ease logistical headaches and costs associated with in-flight service. Many are making massive investments in the next generation of galley-planning and analytics technology. 

For instance, Emirates is deploying digital tracking tools to cut food waste and can even allow passengers to pre-order their meals two weeks in advance. Etihad Airways is piloting blockchain technology for end-to-end tracking of internal inventories. 

And our partner, IFSC, is helping Oman Air and Oman Air Catering digitize its meal-service planning, introducing automated meal planning, digital galley planning, and consumption tracking to support the airline’s growth plans while increasing efficiency.

These airlines are showing that excellent galley planning, efficiency and performance go hand-in-hand. Deploying the next generation of digital tools, including those powered by AI, is giving first movers a clear competitive advantage by enabling them to maintain or improve their service quality at a much lower cost.