Food in the Air and Space

by Richard Foss

  In 1933, a pair of American inventors filed a patent for a new innovation that they called a “steam cooker and food warming device.”3 This was similar to the chafing dishes still used by modern caterers, in which hot liquid or steam is passed under a series of enclosed trays. It was an improvement in that the alcohol flame was enclosed and less likely to come into contact with clothing or other flammables. The disadvantage was that it was only capable of relatively low temperatures, better for reheating than cooking. This system, called a “steam chest,” was installed in some airliners in the late 1930s.

  During the era of unpressurized aircraft with relatively weak engines that flew at low altitudes, liquid fuel stoves and steam chests worked well enough. It was not until the eve of the Second World War that high-flying aircraft with robust engines enabled a return to electric cooking.

  chapter 5

  From 1930 to the Second World War

  Flying Boats

  As the volume of air travel increased, markedly different patterns in service evolved in response to different circumstances. Aircraft designed to operate over land established regular and increasingly reliable operations, and most flights made stops that were timed to allow travelers to dine on the ground. When they didn’t, passengers were usually served a cold meal at their seats. Usually a single steward or stewardess distributed prepackaged meals that were made on the ground, served beverages, and took care of all passenger needs. The first airline caterers went into business to deliver food to aircraft that typically held between twelve and thirty people.

  Things were different on long over-water flights, where gigantic flying boats carried as many as seventy-four passengers, requiring as many as seven service staff. Full meals were cooked on board using increasingly sophisticated equipment, and the logistics of arranging for food to be available at every stop became part of the job of running an airline.

  To anyone considering the future of global travel in the late 1920s, it was obvious that the great potential for flight would be over water. Though aircraft could travel at twice the speed of railroads, that was four times the speed of the fastest ocean liners, and aircraft could take a more or less direct route rather than navigating around islands and unsafe waters. The savings of time for businesspeople made it well worth the additional cost.

  Given the concern about possible failure of the less-than-reliable engines of that day while over the ocean, aircraft that could land on water seemed to offer the best option for safety. As Frank Taylor remarked in his book High Horizons, “Nobody even considered flying the ocean in land planes at that time, and flying boats seemed to be the answer to transatlantic and transpacific air travel.”1 Once radio communication between aircraft and ships became standard procedure, passengers could take comfort in the knowledge that if an aircraft ran out of fuel or had engine trouble they could set down on the water and radio for help. The airline companies also were aware that flying boats did not require as much airport construction in order to start serving a route.

  As in so many other aspects of early commercial aviation the British were first, with Imperial Airways using flying boats to operate the portion of their London to Cairo service that went over the Mediterranean. It was a relatively short section of a very long flight—by 1927 connections with land-based aircraft went the rest of the way to India—but the services over oceans, jungles, and deserts operated without mishap for years. The route extended south and east with startling speed, and by 1934 it was possible to fly from London to Australia using Imperial Airways and Qantas in twelve and a half days. The 12,754-mile journey involved several overnight stops, four changes of aircraft, and one short rail journey to get from a seaplane base in Alexandria to an airport in Cairo, but it compared favorably with the forty-four days that would be involved in taking the same trip by sea. Most meals on the long chain of flights were eaten on the ground, but when this was not practical, hot meals were served from containers called hay boxes, after the insulating material that helped minimize heat loss.2

  Though the meals may have been loaded in places as different and exotic as Athens, Karachi, Bangkok, and Batavia, the airline staff strove to keep the experience as British as possible. One of the rare exceptions was on the final section from Singapore to Melbourne operated by Qantas, which often served “Potage du Kangarou” along with otherwise typically English roasts with potatoes and vegetables. Contemporary reports of Qantas’s inflight service were complimentary; a glass manufacturer’s representative named W. H. Pilkington who flew from London to Brisbane in 1937 reported that the food aboard was superior to that served at some of the isolated waystations that were used for night stops. Pilkington described a “bumper lunch” loaded on board at Rambang, Indonesia, as “omelette, macaroni, peas, salmon, tinned fruit, mineral water and milk,” and called it “very enjoyable.”3 Given that many of the stops on Qantas’s routes were at places with no reliable refrigeration and primitive ground transportation, it is not surprising that no local products were used. Qantas was able to provide the standard of service that travelers of the day expected, and their flying boat services were integrated into their network of internal flights operated by land-based aircraft.

  Qantas Empire Airways presented possibly the most whimsical ad of the prewar era in a 1939 Australian magazine. Since smoking was allowed on these aircraft, King Cole could have called for his pipe along with the three fiddlers.

  Image provided by Qantas

  Seaplanes were regarded as so advantageous for long-distance travel that in June 1937 Imperial Airways replaced the land aircraft that had been operating between Southampton and Cape Town with Empire-class flying boats. The route included landings on the Nile River in Khartoum and on Lake Albert in Uganda before a series of stops at ocean ports along the coast of East Africa. Again the airline strove to avoid serving anything remotely resembling African food on the eight-day journey. When asked if any indigenous foods were featured on these flights, Professor Gordon Pirie, author of two books on British Imperial flying, responded, “You can be sure that it was all very period British: white gloves, silver service, and huge efforts into mimicking home.”4

  Imperial Airways sourced fresh produce from Croydon market on the outbound flight and made it last as long as possible, switching to canned food when necessary. They must have used some local suppliers, because Pirie noted that he had seen references to sherbet and lobster being served in East Africa, and the airline set up a rudimentary logistics operation to make sure that appropriate meals were supplied.5

  All food was loaded in giant baskets and served at room temperature or from insulated boxes, but an initiative to improve onboard service in 1936 raised the standard considerably. As George Banks noted in his excellent book Gourmet and Glamour in the Air, at that time “A typical menu on the flying boat Corsair included Foie Gras or grapefruit, roast chicken, ox tongue and York ham with Russian or green Salad, completed by peaches with Melba Sauce, Cheshire, Camembert and Kraft Cheeses offered with a good wine list and an interesting ‘Airways Cocktail.’”6

  In 1938 Imperial became the first European airline to set up a rudimentary catering service that standardized the meals aboard their Empire-class flying boats. Though heating and refrigeration were still not available on board, the meals developed a reputation as the highest-class picnic in the air. Since most nights were spent on shore at stops along the way, passengers were given the option of selecting their meals the night before, so they could be cooked just before departure and put on board.

  Imperial was able to spend lavishly on passenger comfort because they didn’t need to make a profit, since the airline had a subsidy of a million pounds sterling when it was founded in 1923. The airline was periodically resubsidized until 1939, when the government merged it with other carriers to form BOAC.7

  Imperial eventually operated services most of the way around the world, from Bermuda and New York to Singapore, but they never cros
sed the Pacific or ventured to South America. That entire quadrant of the world was ruled by Pan Am, which eventually developed a sophisticated onboard experience, high-tech logistics, and the most advanced cooking techniques in the sky.

  Pan Am was different from all other American carriers in having no domestic land routes, but the carrier’s founder and president, Juan Trippe, used his political connections to make sure that his airline had no international competition. It became a de facto flag carrier for the United States, and Trippe exploited his monopoly for decades.

  In 1929, Pan Am introduced their first stewards; the original hiring instructions called for “alert and good looking youngsters” for Sikorsky flying boat service between Miami and the Caribbean. They would have had to also be limber, since in the Sikorsky flying boats the galley was in the tail and could only be reached on hands and knees—stewards had to crawl back balancing a tray.

  Following Lufthansa’s lead, Pan Am became the second airline to require culinary expertise among cabin staff. Candidates had to have experience preparing and serving food in “first class restaurants.” According to the excellent book Footsteps in the Sky, a compendium of reminiscences by airline employees, an early Pan Am steward named Joey Carrera was quoted as saying that Pan Am carried several days’ worth of food outbound on Caribbean and South American flights, as “nothing edible could be found at their destination.”8

  The decision to source all the food from Miami may not have entirely been due to this sort of snobbery, as Pan Am had rocky relations with local people at many of the places the airline served. As detailed in the book An American Saga: Juan Trippe and His Pan Am Empire,” at many South American stops there were violent clashes between Pan Am employees and those of local carriers, and some Pan Am airports were like armed camps. In any case the travelers on Pan Am were overwhelmingly Americans and Europeans, most of whom presumably preferred the cuisines they knew.

  Pan Am was the first commercial airline to actually heat food inflight,9 which was done beginning in 1934 while crossing the Caribbean on four-engine Sikorsky S-42 flying boats.10 In a novel use of technology, stewards would take orders from passengers on one leg of a flight and radio ahead to the next station, where the requested meals would be prepared. At the next stop the stewards picked up the desired meals, which would eventually be reheated and served in a dining area separate from the main passenger cabin.

  Pan Am proved adept at marketing their services based on the quality of the food on board. Among the innovations they came up with was what they called “The 160 Mile Dinner,” which was explained in glowing terms by a Washington Post correspondent.

  Food by the mile! That’s the result of the advancement of transportation. Fifteen miles for tomato bisque, 100 miles for fried chicken, 15 miles for the salad, 20 miles for the dessert, and 10 miles for your coffee. That is the way a 160-mile dinner in the air may be eaten.

  It hasn’t been so many years since cheese and ham sandwiches were served for breakfast, lunch and dinner to air passengers by the co-pilot. But that type of service disappeared along with the single-motored transports—now delicious, nutritious meals, “just like mother cooks,” are regularly a part of air service. It’s fun to watch the stewardesses serve 21 dinners from her (sic) kitchenette in less than an hour, as you skim past gorgeous scenery, and soft, billowy clouds.

  The dinners that are served in the air are complete from soup to nuts, including a large variety of food. The menus are carefully chosen—balanced and nutritious—with the idea of pleasing most of the people most of the time. . . . On every ship’s departure from the airport along goes some kind of food, all the way from hot coffee, light and heavy breakfasts to full dinners. Then there is the snack box for the in-betweeners. The stewardess can soon assemble a delightful lunch from it—cold chicken, fancy cheese, olives, crackers, cookies—anything to hit the spot, with milk, hot chocolate and coffee.11

  Unlike other American carriers that served the same meal of fried chicken and salad on every flight, Pan Am varied their meals on a daily basis. Pioneering steward and purser Ovilio “Bill” Moreno recalled that one of his duties before every flight was to type up as many copies of the menu as there were passengers.12

  The apex of flying boat luxury was reached in 1939 when Pan Am started operating Boeing 314 aircraft, which flew on the Pacific routes only. These were equipped with sleeping berths for forty, separate dressing rooms for men and women, and well-stocked bars. A lounge and dining room was separate from the passenger seating or sleeping quarters, and a deluxe cabin in the tail section could be converted into a bridal suite. The 109-foot-long fuselage was divided into two levels connected by a spiral staircase.

  The Boeing 314 galley had an icebox, ample cooking and preparation space, and a variety of heating methods that hadn’t been in existence since the Hindenburg made its last flight. A crewman named Sam Toaramina gave a reminiscence for an oral history project13 and was interviewed for this book, and he described the experience of cooking in that galley on flights to Honolulu and the South Pacific.

  The food was put on in San Francisco, and we cooked it on the airplane—we had steam tables and pressure cookers. Coffee was made in 4 or 5 gallon urns. We had electric ovens with big fans in them, and that cooked the meat. Everything was built so if we had a bumpy flight, it wouldn’t go flying around.

  We didn’t (serve meals) for an hour and a half to two hours (after takeoff).14 It took us that long to prepare the food. If I had a roast beef, the meat was put on raw. We had electric ovens that we put that in, a little larger than a microwave. It would hold a five or 6 pound roast. . . . That food was put on there according to how many passengers I had. So if I was going to have 30 or 40 passengers, maybe I needed two or three of those roasts. . . . We had to peel the potatoes and put them in pressure cookers, and the steam tables took care of that, the carrots and the other items you put in there. When that food was ready, then we decide, OK, maybe another half hour, we want to get the passengers ready for dinner. We did all the slicing and preparation in the galley. We didn’t do any carving in the cabin, in those days.

  Since there was only room for twelve people at the table and the aircraft held more than that, passengers dined in shifts. Toaramina remembered that “people were quite surprised to see the table set with sterling silver and Irish linen, silver water pitchers and flower arrangements on the table. It was like a first-class restaurant.”

  Those aircraft left San Francisco and Honolulu with fresh food, but fruit and vegetables were less reliably available on stopovers on sparsely inhabited Pacific islands. Cans of beets, carrots, ham, and chicken à la king formed the main courses, and at every stop the purser on the aircraft went shopping for whatever was available in the local market. The pursers carried receipt books and took the paperwork back to the airline to be reimbursed at the end of each flight.

  They had time to do some shopping because there were multiple overnight stops to refuel the aircraft, service the huge radial engines, and allow the passengers some time to relax. The “China Clipper” flights from San Francisco to Manila were scheduled with just under sixty hours of actual flying time, but took almost six and a half days to complete if everything ran on schedule. Frequently the flights ran off schedule; the seaplane might not be able to take off for days if the ocean was particularly rough, and it was not unusual for the aircraft to arrive a week late.

  To provide passenger and crew comfort, Pan Am constructed hotels on all the islands, along with fuel storage tanks, caches of canned food, spare parts depots, and lodgings for the workers who remained on the islands. The airline personnel stayed in the same hotel as paying customers, and passengers and crew mingled during the days of enforced idleness. On the average it took the aircrew between a month and six weeks to make the round trip to San Francisco.

  On the return to Hawaii and the Mainland, the aircrew had to perform a ritual they did nowhere else—the Unit
ed States had strict health regulations about importing food, and that included the waste scraps on the aircraft. At Hawaii it was unloaded from the aircraft, inspected, and incinerated close to the dock. There was a much more hazardous procedure for San Francisco arrivals. When the Farallon Islands, which are thirty miles offshore from San Francisco, were sighted, a steward was tasked with opening a rear door and throwing bags of trash out of the aircraft. The Northern California weather made this task more difficult; as Toaramina remembers, “There were times when it was fogged in, and we didn’t know where the Farallon Islands were because we couldn’t see them. I’m sure sometimes we might have thrown it over San Francisco Bay, or over San Francisco as a matter of fact.” It would be decades before concern about environmental regulations and recycling forced a reevaluation of the problem of how to dispose of airline trash.

  Pan Am, Qantas, and Imperial weren’t the only airlines to have flying boat operations prior to World War II; Tasman Empire Airways, the predecessor to Air New Zealand, started flying to Australia in 1940, and the South American airlines SCADTA and Varig operated a network of services around the continent using Junkers seaplanes.15 None pioneered innovations in service or passenger comfort, so their operations in that era have no place in this book.

  Seaplane service worldwide was interrupted when the war broke out, with all flying boats nationalized and pressed into government service. The flying boats that survived would carry passengers again, and a few new ones would be built, but it would be in a changed world.

  chapter 6

  Land-Based Craft from 1930 to the Outbreak of War

  In Europe in 1930, most airlines were state owned or directed, and there was very little competition between carriers. Many routes were flown between capitals like London or Paris and current or former colonies as an instrument of government policy rather than commercial necessity. Passenger comfort aboard such flights was a matter of prestige rather than profit.