There’s a 75 to 80 percent decrease in flights around the world, on top of airport lounges that are being closed left and right. That’s a whole lot of food airlines would normally offer passengers in their planes and lounges that’s just sitting there, gathering proverbial dust.
Meanwhile, coronavirus isn’t going away any time soon, time marches on, and foods made for public consumption always have an expiration date. Here’s how the legacy airlines are handling the situation…
Delta Air Lines
Delta announced on April 7th that they are providing more than 200,000 pounds of food to local hospitals, community food banks and other organizations. The food is earmarked to help those in need, as well as those who are working on the front lines of the COVID pandemic.
As posted in their announcement, these are some of the places where Delta has made a difference:
- So far in 2020, Delta has donated over 200,000 pounds of perishable food items from warehouses to Feeding America partner agencies across the U.S. and other charities, including Georgia Food & Resource Center and Missouri’s Carthage Crisis Center.
- Regional managers are working with caterers to donate food where needed. In Nice, France, Delta partnered with local caterer Newrest to donate pre-packaged snacks to hospitals and healthcare workers. Additionally, food and coffee were donated to MIR, an organization distributing free meals and providing shelter to the homeless and human trafficking survivors. Managers in New York are also doing their part by providing food donations to hospitals in their region.
- In Philadelphia, Delta partnered with SodexoMAGIC to donate over 500 pounds of food from the Delta Sky Club at the airport to a local Feeding America food bank.
- Delta Sky Clubs around the U.S. including those in Los Angeles and at New York’s JFK and LaGuardia airports have activated programs similar to the one in Philadelphia, providing donations to first responders, local charities and churches.
- Delta is working with Linton Hopkins – an award-winning Atlanta chef and longtime Delta partner – to provide trays and packaging supplies to support food distribution with initiatives like ATLFAMILYMEAL, which delivers meals to Atlanta hospitality workers. Hopkins’ team is delivering over 5,000 meals per week, including to first responders at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital.
- Delta employees are caring for their colleagues by sending fresh Flight Fuel boxed meals to Reservations and Customer Care centers to support the teams responding to unprecedented numbers of customers needing to make changes to their flights.
American Airlines
Two days after Delta’s announcement, American Airlines also posted about the unused food they’ve been donating to local organizations.
“We saw this as an opportunity to care for the communities where our team members and customers live and work,” said Ron DeFeo, Senior Vice President – Global Engagement for American. “The challenges facing local food banks and the growing need for families to utilize the resources these organizations offer have been well documented. Once we learned of the surplus, we knew exactly what we were going to do with it.”
In the month of April alone, American Airlines reports they have so far donated:
63,000 meals to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
26,000 meals to St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, Arizona.
4,000 pounds of fresh produce to Equal Heart in Dallas.
1,100 pounds of milk to Minnie’s Food Pantry in Dallas.
10,000 food items to the Tarrant Area Food Bank in Fort Worth, Texas.
They also have plans to donate more than 10,000 food items to the Global Food Bank Network in Hong Kong later this month.
United Airlines
In my research for this piece, I discovered that United will match up to 500,000 miles per campaign or charity that provides direct relief for coronavirus. They’re partnering with Governor Newsom to provide free R/T flights for medical volunteers traveling to California to fight against the coronavirus crisis. They donated their ad space in London to UNICEF.
But I couldn’t find any information about them donating unused food.
Maybe they did and aren’t telling anymore. Or maybe they’re still in the midst of planning it all out. But as of this writing, that’s all I’ve got.
#stayhealthy #stayathome #washyourhands
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
