In a surprising move, the national carrier Air India has decided to scrap all non-vegetarian food on its domestic flights. That is, if you’re flying Economy. Understandably this has baffled quite a few people. Air India says that the reasons behind this is purely economic. The carrier seeks to cut down on its costs as well as ‘wastage’, as Air India puts it. The Airline hopes that this will save up to ₹10 crore annually. The deep-in-debt airline spends about ₹350-400 crore annually on catering.
The airline has given a few implausible reasons too, the chief of which is that there have been food mix-ups in the past, where vegetarian passengers have been supplied with non-vegetarian meals. Air India apparently doesn’t want this to happen any more, so it’s scuppering all non-veg meals. In December 2015, the carrier had scuppered non-veg meals in all flights of under 90 minutes.
This comes hard on the heels of recent news that the national carrier may be sold off soon, with the government setting up a GoM to look into the disinvestment of the airline.