Air Canada responds to American passenger claiming she was served expired food
Air Canada has issued a statement after an American passenger alleged that she was served expired food during a flight.
Kerry Schwartz was travelling on an Air Canada flight in November when she claims to have been served food that had been expired for several months. In a brief clip shared on Nov. 13 on her TikTok channel @comfywith_kerry, Schwartz shared her reaction to the experience. Her Amazon biography describes her as a U.S.-based author and media professional.
“When you’re flying Air Canada [in] Nov. 2025… and realize after finishing your meal that the beef they served expired six months ago,” she wrote in the caption. “Pray for me.”
The post currently has nearly 640,000 views.
@comfywith_kerry EXPIRED food on Canada Air 😩🇨🇦 #flight #traveltiktok #airplanefood #flights #ohno @canadaairline ♬ Welp, Didn’t Expect That – Yu-Peng Chen & HOYO-MiX
Looking frustrated, Schwartz points to a bread roll and a beef dish with the date 06/11/25 on the packaging, likely assuming they’re dated June 11, 2025.
Several commenters stated that Schwartz read the dates wrong.
“Girl, those dates are the fifth and sixth of November 2025! Everywhere else in the world writes dates as day/month/year,” they stated.
Another said, “The rest of the world does the date like this. It’s just Americans.”
One Canadian viewer noted, “We do our date right. Most places outside of the U.S. use dd/mm/yy like we do. Just like most places use Celsius and the metric system. America is wrong, not Canada.”
However, Schwartz responded to some commenters correcting her, stating, “NOPE! I asked the flight attendant, and she said they keep them frozen for six months.”
In another reply, she insisted, “Noooo, I asked the flight attendant — she said they stay frozen for six months after expiration date 😩.”
Daily Hive reached out to Air Canada regarding the incident, and a representative for the airline stated, “We have looked into this matter, and it appears the customer misread the date on the food package, and the expiry date had not passed.”
They also stated that “all packaged meals served on Air Canada international flights to Canada [are] prepared daily.”
A post on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) website explaining Americanisms to newcomers outlines how date formats differ around the world.
alessandrorossini.org
“The United States is one of the few countries that use ‘mm-dd-yyyy’ as their date format — which is very, very unique!” states the site. “The day is written first and the year last in most countries (dd-mm-yyyy), and some nations, such as Iran, Korea, and China, write the year first and the day last (yyyy-mm-dd).”
One theory is that the U.S. borrowed the format used by the U.K.; however, the U.K. then changed the format to match the rest of Europe.
It appears to have been a misunderstanding due to the cultural differences between the U.S. and Canada.
“How about saying sorry to Air Canada? 😆,” one commenter wrote.