American Stops Catering Food at LAX Due to Listeria Outbreak

Listeria was found at Gate Gourmet at LAX, and American has suspended provisioning catering from the facility. Delta and several international airlines also use Gate Gourmet at LAX but have not taken a similar step.

Gate Gourmet found a trace of listeria “as part of routine inspections (in) non-found contact areas, primarily floor drains,” said spokeswoman Catherine Nugent. She said the company treated the areas “immediately and aggressively.”

Listeriosis affects 1600 people a year “and about 260 die” from the food borne illness.

JonNYC offers color on how American is handling the inability to offer standard catering out of LAX.

Double catering means flying food to Los Angeles both for that flight, and the flight out of Los Angeles. That has its limitations, for instance they aren’t going to cater hot breakfast meals on a flight to Los Angeles in the evening where the plane sits until morning.

I guess it’s time to bring back out the Bistro Bag carts. In the 90s you might have gotten a chicken sandwich with cheddar, lettuce and tomato along with a bag of chips and a cookie. At one point American Airlines did a deal with America Online to include their startup CDs in the bistro bags.

One of the kinder things that was said about the bistro bags by around 2003 or 2004 was “beastly bags” — and of course the same bag that contained food soon doubled as an air sickness bag.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. The food has been contaminated long before this
    They only take action when an inspector tests their tainted crap offerings

  2. This is very interesting, as in July, 2016, this airline catering outfit totally failed American. Flights to Honolulu, DFW, ORD, and the east did not receive first class meal catering, nor topping off of liquor kits. Apparently, the station managers were unaware, as the gate agents never advised passengers to get their meals before boarding–at their expense or on AA.

    When I contacted AA, corporate was totally oblivious to the issue. Gather that beats getting Listeria.

    Interesting how we do not hear such heinous stories re Lufthansa…

    Of course, when you look at the totally skimpy, pathetic, CharlieBrown F Class lunch and dinner selections on American, why don’t they just offer a bag of chips?

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