Business class flyer served single banana with chopsticks as vegan meal

What’s the deal with vegan airline food? A person who recently took a long-distance flight with Japan Airlines has the same question.

Kris Chari, who was travelling in business class, boarded his Jakarta-to-Tokyo flight on February 21. He had pre-ordered a vegan meal, which his flight attendant confirmed before the plane took off.

But what happened during the actual meal service was shocking enough to prompt Chari to write a post about it on flyertalk.com the same day.

“Before takeoff today my flight attendant confirmed that I ordered VGML and that my breakfast was a banana, by which I mistakenly assumed she meant that breakfast included a banana,” he began. “When she served the banana after takeoff, I thought it was just an underwhelming appetizer, but it was in fact the entire meal service!”

Kris Chari

Yup, Chari’s vegan breakfast was no more than a banana, served delicately with some metal cutlery and chopsticks.

“It was a really good banana — one of the best I’ve had recently — but it still seems more appropriate as a snack,” the disappointed flyer said, asking others on the forum if the catering out of Soekarno–Hatta International Airport was “typically this underwhelming.”

For lunch, Chari said he was served some barely seasoned spaghetti.

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Insider spoke to Japan Airlines, which apologized for being unable to meet the expectations. Their representative also confirmed that the snack option for non-vegan travellers on Chari’s flight comprised seared tuna, Moroccan-style eggplant salad, a baguette, and two types of cheeses with orange salsa.

It is no wonder Chari felt some kind of way about his lacklustre vegan options.

Last year in August, a vegan flyer was served a napkin with a water bottle as a “meal” on an Air Canada flight to Toronto.

“My vegan meals did not make the flight, I was told, and there was nothing they could do,” Miriam Porter said. She made a TikTok about the incident, too.

Luckily, Porter was able to ask a few in-flight crew members for help. Though she was flying economy, the attendants ended up giving her some fruit, a dinner roll, and a granola bar from business class.

Some publications covering the incident have falsely claimed that Chari is suing Japan Airlines following the incident, but he’s only hoping that his experience will push the carrier to improve its catering service.

“It was cute of the crew to serve the banana with chopsticks, though!” he said.