Courtesy Turkish Airlines
A tray covered in indeterminable beige items. A vegan meal of a single banana, wrapped in plastic. Stale sandwiches, limp vegetables, frozen cheese. Horrendous airline food has become the stuff of late-night comedy, but these days the punch line isn’t always landing in the same way.
Aviation firms—both private fractional providers and commercial airlines—are following the trends of the restaurant industry by not only offering better food and sometimes bringing big-name chefs to the table but also by paying attention to provenance, locality, and seasonality.
BizAv leader VistaJet changes its menus seasonally, sourcing from 7,000 providers around the world. Swiss Air, the earliest adopter of local cuisine, started its Taste of Switzerland program more than two decades ago, with foods (including wine and cheese) from its 26 cantons. Turkish Airlines’s business-class menu is going all in with Mediterranean dishes such as adana kebabs, lahmacun flatbread, and köpoğlu eggplant spread, with local ingredients that are never frozen.
Here are seven providers that are taking the in-flight dining experience to new heights.
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VistaJet
Image Credit: Courtesy VistaJet VistaJet works with high-quality ingredients, sourced from 7,000 suppliers from around the world, to create menus that shift with the seasons. For spring/summer, expect plates of wild salmon cured in Isle of Skye whisky and served with a German cambozola blue cheese mousse; French spring lamb stew; and seabass from Chile with confit tomatoes.
Beyond the seasonal selection, the private aviation company also partners with over 100 private chefs and Michelin-starred restaurants—from Zeffirino in Genoa to Origin Grill in Singapore. Some dishes, like chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s steamed salmon dry miso, aren’t even available on the ground and are exclusively made for passengers flying onboard VistaJet’s fleet.
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Flexjet
Image Credit: Courtesy Flexjet “Although sometimes we do source specific restaurants for the menu when the owner requests it, we don’t just want to reheat food somebody else prepared,” says Megan Wolf, chief experience officer at Flexjet. “We equip our cabin servers to have a chef’s mindset and training.” To achieve this, the private-aviation brand created its own education program centered around local sourcing, tableside preparation, and storytelling—for a chance to tie in local origins or highlight hometown provenance. One of the training exercises for cabin servers includes creating a specialty cocktail and crudité for Flexjet’s Vice President of Owner Experience, a task that includes sourcing the ingredients as well as presenting the story behind it. Talk about pressure. But it does sharpen the staff’s culinary skills and shows the fractional provider’s seriousness about the cuisine it serves.
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NetJets
With the world’s largest and most diverse private jet fleet, Netjets is no stranger to catering to different tastes. Across the U.S., they offer a Signature Selections menu of crowd-pleasing cold plates, which are swapped out seasonally, but more impressive are the custom-designed, New York–focused menus: Owners departing from one of the 11 airports in the New York metro area get to feast on dishes from city institutions such as Jean-Georges’s ABC Kitchen, chic-deli Sadelle’s, and the Little Italy new classic, Parm.
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Swiss Air
Image Credit: Courtesy Swiss Air Swiss Air has been a true leader in introducing locality to their in-flight cuisine with the Taste of Switzerland program. An early adopter, it has been in operation for over two decades. Every three months, the in-flight menu changes to center around the cuisine (including the wine and cheese) from one of Switzerland’s 26 cantons, created in collaboration with a gourmet restaurant in that region. For example, guests flying Swiss Air this summer get a taste of Bern, with dishes like beetroot and strawberry gazpacho with smoked trout quenelle and quail egg from the Michelin-starred Aux Trois Amis, in Bern’s Lake Biel.
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Emirates
Image Credit: Courtesy Emirates With menus changing monthly, Emirates serves authentic cuisine from both the country of departure and the country of arrival. To ensure this offering is top notch, a diverse culinary team is the main focus, and the catering crew is comprised of 60 different nationalities. Other perks for foodies flying Emirates: It’s one of the best airlines for vegans, with over 180 vegan dishes, and they also serve celebration meals for holidays such as Eid al Fitr and Easter. (Bonus points for some added luxury: First-class dishes come served on elegant English fine bone china by Royal Doulton.)
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Turkish Airlines
Image Credit: Courtesy Turkish Air Lines Honey from the eastern Anatolian province of Erzincan; black tea from Rize on the lush Black Sea coast; kaymak, similar to clotted cream, from Afyon: This is just a taste of the hyper-local and fresh flavors of Turkish Airlines’s business-class meals these days. Taking home the 2023 Skytrax award for best business class onboard catering, its recently updated menus—which include dishes such as adana kebabs; lahmacun flatbread; and köpoğlu eggplant spread—are made up of 80 percent locally sourced, never-frozen ingredients. The Flying Chefs program, which are on business-class flights typically over eight hours, is also a nice touch. The chef in full garb serves the meal on a trolley, adding finishing touches at the client’s seat. It might seem like overkill at 40,000 feet, but it shows the airline’s commitment to thoughtful presentation.
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Virgin Atlantic
Image Credit: Courtesy Virgin Atlantic Besides haute cuisine in first class, Virgin Atlantic might just have the best British snacks and tipples in the sky, carrying classic brands such as Walker’s Shortbread, Twinings tea, McVitie’s biscuits, Brewdog beer, and Fever-Tree mixers. But they’re also champions of small, up-and-coming U.K. producers like Pip organic ice lollies, a family business that launched in London’s famed foodie haven of Borough Market. At their flagship London Heathrow Clubhouse, Virgin Atlantic also recently revealed a new partnership with Full Circle Farms—a pesticide- and herbicide-free community farm based in West Sussex, that will supply the airline with fruit, vegetables, and herbs.