The curses of having to pre-book a meal months in advance without context or any real thoughtfulness struck, and I wound up sat looking at this ‘Roast Chicken’ dinner at approximately 6:30am, at a time I’d either more regularly be sleeping off a hangover, or looking for the first of many daily cups of coffee. But here we are, with what turned out not to be a bad meal at all, despite the offensive time…
Airline: AirAsia AK6492
Route: Kota Kinabalu – Sandakan (Approx. 40 minutes)
Class: Economy
Having booked this flight months in advance, as we wearily groaned into an Irish winter and I became entirely consumed by the prospect of an upcoming Christmas feast and the associated December socially-acceptable daytime drinking period, I did my best to consider what meal would I most want three days into a stay in Asia. I did not, however, devote an appropriate amount of thought to the time of the day that this flight would occur at.
With a cruising time of probably only around 10 minutes, the crew didn’t have time for much in the way of pleasantries or inefficiency; they hurried down the aisle more or less the instant the seatbelt sign was extinguished, carrying as many green ‘Santan’ thermal bags as they could muster, literally handing them out along the way to anyone who had pre-ordered a meal.
We were sat somewhere in the middle of the plane, but still got our meals handed out to us within the second ‘return trip’ to the galley to collect more bags for the crew.
Given that it was 6:30am, I was barely awake nor aware of where I was, I’m going to surprise everyone today by saying something you, and I, never thought possible – I actually quite enjoyed this low-cost airline meal.
It was searing hot, like almost inedible, and actually tasted great; perhaps it was an overwhelming quantity of salt, I can’t be sure. Normally, I’d almost certainly gripe about the child-size portion, but again it seemed just right for a roast chicken dinner being consumed about 12 hours away from when such a meal should normally be consumed.
As I sat there devouring it as quickly as I could, we had already begun our descent and the point of handing out the green thermal bags – incredibly generous for such an otherwise austere airline – made perfect sense as most simply carried their bags off for later consumption.
Overall a very pleasant dining experience, despite the inappropriateness of the meal relative to the time – I’m not sure what more one could expect from such a low-cost airline experience.
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