Can Food You Eat On The Plane Make You Feel Healthier?

Boeing is studying whether the food you eat on a flight can make you feel better. The research includes nutritional studies, as well as figuring out what kinds of galleys and packaging airlines would need to serve the improved meals.

At Boeing's Payload Concepts Center north of Seattle, engineers are studying techniques used by Starbucks, Disney, Cirque du Soleil and Wal-Mart for clues to make flying less of a chore. Forbes quoted Pete Guard, the center's director: "We are having a blast. Good for them. Now what about us?"

Boeing has teamed with Disney to study ways airlines can adapt Disney's customer-service techniques  to better serve passengers. A main focus is streamlining procedures, so flight attendants and gate crews can focus on making customers happy. Boeing’s also studying Starbucks' customer service models, to see whether the vaunted "Starbucks experience” can be duplicated at 30,000 feet.

Engineers are also looking into the seats. Some models now under study recline by moving the bottom of the seat forward, instead of pushing the back of the seat into the lap of the person behind. This would reduce a major source of irritation.

Among other ideas in the works:

• Better service: Boeing has teamed with Disney to study ways airlines can adapt Disney's customer-service techniques.

• Connectivity: Boeing's experiment with aerial Internet service, called Connexion by Boeing, failed. The company last year closed the operation. But others are pushing ahead, including Panasonic, which will have a system capable of text message transmission available with a year.

• Cell phones: Panasonic is among several companies developing Voice over Internet phone service for aircraft. The issue here is less technology than one of human factors, said Boeing's Guard. How do airlines handle noisy callers? Should you ban calls during quiet times when people are trying to sleep? One idea: designated "no cellphone" zones.

• View ports: Boeing's also considering embedding view ports in the floors next to doorways. During flights, people could gather there to look down at either a TV image of the ground they're flying over, or a Google Earth image streamed onto the screen.

How far can it go? Early sales campaigns for Boeing rival Airbus A380 super-jumbo envisioned cocktail lounges, casinos--even staterooms--making flying more like a luxury cruise. We're not likely to ever see that, said Teal Group aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia, because airlines are planning to fill the big space with seats, not duty-free shops. [Get the full story ¦ Forbes]