In a surprising development Lufthansa’s air crew are revolting against the Kosher Food Tax albeit by proxy because it causes them a huge amount of issues in performing their job while in the air.
Ben Schlappig of ‘One Mile at a Time’ explains what is going on rather well:
‘On long haul international flights with meal services, it’s normal for airlines to let you pre-order a special meal. This is intended primarily for those with dietary or religious restrictions, though anyone can order them.
In the case of Lufthansa, there are 11 different special meals to choose from, ranging from meals based on dietary restrictions (gluten free, low cholesterol, low sodium, etc.) to meals based on religion (Kosher, Hindu, Muslim, etc.).
The issue is that crews have seen a sharp increase in the number of passengers ordering special meals over the years, and this significantly complicates the service flow:
Lufthansa crews are regularly seeing 100 special meals ordered per flight, with some flights seeing up to 190 special meals ordered.
At most airlines (including Lufthansa), special meals are brought out first, and then the main meal service is performed; however, when you have 100+ special meals, this causes issues, and delays the service for other passengers.
Lufthansa reportedly doesn’t label each special meal with the seat number and name of the passenger, so the logistics are complicated, as crews have quite the process by which they have to deliver these.
I can completely understand the frustration among flight attendants here. It’s one thing if five people are ordering a special meal, but when half the cabin is ordering a special meal, it’s a challenge for the crew. And it’s not just an issue of it being too much work for the crew, but it makes it hard to manage expectations of other guests, since this volume of special meals delays the service for other passengers.’ (1)
To summarise then the problem isn’t the cost but rather because the concept of the special meal on a passenger flight was always intended to be a specialist courtesy service for those passengers with special dietary needs for medical and/or religious reasons. The service was also designed to get these specialist meals served first to get them out the way and then allow regular meals to be easily and efficiently served to passengers without these requirements.
This makes complete sense but if you’ve got say a third of the passengers on the flight ordering special meals then it causes a nightmare for the crew as they have to serve the correct special meal to every passenger requiring one before the rest of the passengers get their food.
But Karl, I hear you say… the article doesn’t stipulate that kosher meals are the problem, and it is true Schlappig doesn’t explicitly state this, but Mateusz Maszcynski does. (2)
True it isn’t all related to pre-prepared kosher meals to be sure but a significant part of the problem for Lufthansa air crew is serving kosher meals. This goes back to what I’ve stated previously in that the kosher meal industry is massively profitable for kosher certification agencies and the jewish community organizations that usually run them and are a way for them to generate large amounts of revenue as well as a way to get non-jews to subsidize the cost of kosher food for jews. (3)
In the existing system on Lufthansa flights the significantly increased cost of serving kosher meals is absorbed within the cost of the entire flight’s tickets not the people with tickets ordering kosher meals. With the proposed new system those not ordering kosher meals would not have to subsidize them within the cost of their ticket and those ordering them would have to pay an additional subsidiary cost to offset the time and trouble caused by these meals to the air crew as well as other passengers in addition to at least partly offsetting the increased cost of kosher meals.
Thus, ensuring that non-jews aren’t subsidizing kosher meals for jews.
References
(1) https://onemileatatime.com/news/lufthansa-flight-attendants-special-meals/
(2) https://www.paddleyourownkanoo.com/2024/02/27/flight-attendants-at-lufthansa-want-passengers-to-pay-more-for-special-meals-to-dissuade-them-from-ordering-them/
(3) See my articles: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-free-kosher-school-lunches and https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-continuing-push-to-have-non-jews