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I have to fly tomorrow (to where? who knows!) and got to thinking about airline meals. We vegetarians have to consider this sort of thing, you know, lest we end up with a piece of airline chicken in front of us. I always diligently request a vegan meal in advance of the flight. However, it isn’t unheard of for vegetarians who do this to receive a non-veggie meal anyway (with the über-helpful advice to “just eat around it,” naturally). I suppose it shouldn’t, in light of overbooked flights, etc., but it surprises me that this would happen. After all, all of the people who requested vegetarian or vegan meals are in the airline’s system. It ought to be a simple task of matching veggie meals with veggie requesters, then, right? Under ideal circumstances, I imagine that it would be. I realized, though, that there are three variables outside of the airline’s control and, therefore, sitting in the system’s blind-spot.
First, the people who booked a ticket in advance are not necessarily the people who end up on the flight. The airline sells more tickets than it can physically offer. This leaves a potential mismatch between the passengers on-board and the distribution of meals brought along.
Second, there are forgetful vegetarians (or, more likely, people who observe religious dietary restrictions). Who would think twice about asking a passing flight attendant to bring a vegetarian meal? Likewise, I’m sure many people take a look at the non-veggie meal and decide that a vegetarian meal might be a lot better.
Still, these issues could be solved by packing extra vegetarian and vegan meals. The airlines should be able to use the data that they have on meal requests to come up with an algorithm that can predict the number of such meals on a flight.
The third issue is less simple: individual flight attendants have an incentive to give into unplanned-for requests. As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Rather than risking a conflict with a dissatisfied passenger who has already asked for special treatment (in-flight rather than at the appropriate time, that is), it’s easier for a flight attendant to acquiesce. Of course, this may mean that a vegetarian or vegan’s request goes unsatisfied, but the odds are small that that person would be one of said flight attendant’s customers. Instead, it’s more likely that he or she would be sitting in another, unknowing, attendant’s section.
That’s what we call a collective action problem. While there is general agreement among the flight attendants and with the airline that people who request specific meals should receive them, it’s impossible to enforce this agreement in the moment without creating new, costly burdens. And that’s why it’s so hard to create and enforce international treaties on climate change, whaling, overfishing, nuclear weapons, etc. Every individual has an incentive to defect.
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derekpeterson posted this
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Derek wanders the Internet
I find Internet things that I like, so I post them here. Twitter: @derekpetey. Follow via RSS or visit my archive.
