AWARD-winning Australian chef Neil Perry has been consulting with Qantas for 17 years now, leading to a new way of cooking and serving passengers in the airline’s first and business classes. “We actually cook and blanch on-board, we don’t just reheat like other airlines,” Perry says for Qantas. The Qantas menu offers many choices including healthy options and passengers can eat as healthy or light as they like. Where possible, Qantas uses sustainable produce and its menus change seasonally so as to source fresh, local ingredients for its regional menus.
It is, for now, the best restaurant in the sky, and Qantas looks at constant improvements to its menus, crew training, to both cook the food and provide excellent service. To that effect, it has invested in equipment such as real coffee machines to be able to offer a selection of coffees from cappuccinos to espressos and better ovens and toasters to be able to serve fresh toast on-board as well. All lunch and dinner services offered to the first-class passengers come with matching grape. Select on Q – Eat is an online meal selection service, which enables customers to pre-select their meals from a wider menu, and specify when they would like to dine, 72 to 24 hours prior to departure. Customers can also advise if they would like to skip the supper service, so cabin crew know they want to go to sleep straightaway.Qantas’ International Business sleep service provides customers with a mattress, duvet and a special T2 wellbeing tea blend designed to encourage sleep. Cabin crew offer a turndown service when customers are ready to sleep. On shorter night flights between Australia and Asia, an express breakfast service option will give customers even more sleep time.Qantas was awarded the Best Airline Australia-Pacific in the 2014 Skytrax World Airline Awards for the second year in a row. It ranks 11th out of the top 100 airlines in the world, and in addition to its category win, is placed in the top ten airlines in a majority of categories including Best Airline Inflight Entertainment (fourth), Best Business Airline Lounges (fourth) and Best Airline Business Class (sixth). Some of the key customer service-related improvements delivered by Qantas in the past 12 months include: new lounges in both Hong Kong and Los Angeles, ongoing enhancements to menus and wine lists, a new range of luxury spa treatments and products by Aurora Spa and upgraded iPhone app. By the end of this year, the first of the airline’s refurbished A330s will enter service. Last year, Qantas extended its Select on Q-Eat service to Premium Economy, enabling customers to order their meal online prior to flying, offering more choice, including an additional dish available as an online exclusive on select routes.