MAS serving hot meals in boxes

View: In the ever tight airline industry, a 5 minute savings in turnaround time can potentially increase revenues by millions a year.

Tuesday August 5, 2008 THESTAR

PETALING JAYA: Hot meals are back on Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flights, but they are still served in meal boxes.

MAS managing director and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Idris Jala said the hot meal boxes, which were launched last month, had improved aircraft turnaround time by five minutes.

“By improving the turnaround time, MAS can increase revenue by RM50mil a year,” he said at the MAS Academy yesterday.

He said passengers who do not feel like eating while on board could take the meal boxes as takeaways.

“We prefer that passengers take them out, as this means we save on cleaning time,” Idris said, adding that the objective was to increase in-flight efficiency.

“This approach will see the return of all-time favourites such as nasi lemak and nasi goreng kampung as well as the introduction of new varieties.”

Passengers can choose from 37 Asian and Western meal options that change on a daily basis. Those with special dietary requirement need to inform the airline when during ticket booking their tickets.

“We are conducting an in-flight survey until Aug 15 and will use the findings to continuously refine our meal offerings,” he said.

The airlines is also progressively developing special meals such as for children and vegetarians, and these will be introduced by the end of next month.

Hot meal boxes are currently offered on domestic flights from Kuala Lumpur to Penang, Kuching, Miri and Kota Kinabalu, as well as on Asean flights between Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, Yangon, Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, Jogjakarta, Phuket, Bandar Seri Begawan, Denpasar, Hanoi, Jakarta, Manila, Siem Reap, Surabaya and Singapore.