posted by Conor on Jan 21
Travel Date: May 11, 2007
Origin: Los Angeles (LAX)
Destination: Tokyo (NRT)
Airline: ANA (All Nippon Airways)
Flight: ANA 005
The Story:
This flight to Tokyo took a turn for the worse once the first meal of the trip was served. This situation did not in fact affect me, but rather the entire plane.
I did not notice what was wrong at first. I was lucky enough to be sitting in Business Class, so I was not as close to the rest of the passengers as usual. But towards the end of the meal, the flight attendant came to me and asked if the butter tasted funny because they had received a few complaints. I replied that it did not, but then realized that I had yet to use any butter (I’m not a big butter fan). So, I lightly buttered some bread and took a bite. It did not taste horrible, but it did taste slightly different than what I was used to at home. I let the flight attendant know that it tasted slightly different, finished my meal, and went back to sleep.
An hour or so later, I spoke with the flight attendant again and she mentioned that some people had gotten sick from the butter. I was nervous the rest of the flight, even though I did not eat any more butter than the one bite I had taken as a test. In retrospect, testing if the food is bad by trying it and seeing if I get sick, is probably not the most intelligent way to test anything.
I ended up not getting sick, but the whole event threw me for a loop and I recorded it in my air travel notes. The impressive turn to came on my return flight, when the flight attendant came to me directly, just as I sat down, and addressing me by both names apologized for my previous flight and asked if I had any sickness problems after getting off the plane. Either ANA is extremely diligent or they had some serious butter problems that led to serious sicknesses. I will never know, but they did treat me quite well on the flight home.
Two weeks later, in the mail, I received this apology letter from ANA:
“We regret that you experienced a sense of discomfort with the whipped butter served on ANA Flight 005 from Los Angeles to Tokyo Narita on May 11th.
We have ordered the caterer to immediately investigate the issue, and found out that during the production of this whipped butter, they have put in more heavy cream than stated in the recipe, causing the cheese-like smell. At the same time, we have sent the butter samples to certified laboratories, and received confirmation that there was no sign of deterioration, and consuming this product would not cause any harm to the human body.”
This is something I can truly say I have never received from any other airline for any of the other horrible travel situations I have had in the past. All in all, it was a weird situation, but I managed to live for another flight.
