We've all seen it before -- you're in a
restaurant and the person at the table next to you has their camera
phone out and is happy-snapping their chosen dish before uploading it to
one of the many social media sites out there.
Food lovers the
world over are now taking their cuisine-capturing antics to the skies as
airlines find more and more of their dishes are ending up online.
Airlinemeals.net
is one such site that travelers are posting their pictures to and with
over 26,000 photos and counting of more than 600 flight operators, the
industry is taking notice.
Ten years ago Marco 't Hart was in a
long-distance relationship which saw him flying every six to eight
weeks. On one such flight he took a picture of his food at the behest of
his inquisitive parents.
Weeks later curiosity lead him to the
Internet to see if others were doing the same and he found around 20
images. After seeking the image owners permission, he thought it would
be fun to put the pictures on a website and airlinemeals.net was born.
"[I
was] amazed at first, as it was never set up to be as big as it is now.
After that it became clear there was a demand for this site, so I kept
developing it, trying to inform people as well as I can," 't Hart told
CNN.
There was once a time where the words "in-flight food"
induced involuntary shudders from frequent flyers and nightmarish images
of shapeless, gray meat drearily covered in dubious-looking sauce with a
rock-hard bread roll and tasteless cake as side dishes. 't Hart says it
is because of the unpopularity of certain foods that the site became so
successful.
He says: "Ten years ago this was one of the first
websites that gave people the opportunity to share and leave feedback at
things from every day life. The site gave people a place to complain.
Besides that people enjoy looking at some of the odd images."
The
website's success has even caught the attention of airline catering
companies who he says use the site in a different way to frequent
flyers.
"Airlines and crew also use the site as a tool to educate their people and to read responses from travelers."
Along
with the emergence of flying food critics, the increased popularity in
airline review websites like Skytrax and Skyscanner have caused airlines
to make a concerted crack at improving in-flight gastronomy.
Especially
in the business and first-class cabins where travelers have seen flight
operators bringing Michelin-starred chefs to reinvent their food for
offer.
You can also follow AirlineMeals on Twitter.