A passenger on Air Canada filmed her inflight meal, zoomed in on the packaging dates, and announced she was being served food that “expired six months ago.” The labels read “05/11/2025” and “06/11/2025.”
She thought “05/11” meant May.
This is the kind of thing Americans get mocked for abroad. It’s not so much “stupid Americans” as it is provincial Americans who assume the rest of the world uses U.S. conventions. Air Canada is a Canadian carrier. Canada, like most of the planet, at least sometimes uses day/month/year. “05/11/2025” is 5 November, not May 11. She was served food prepared for that week, not food that was six months old.
She doubled down and asked a flight attendant, who reportedly explained that meals can be frozen for months. That only reinforced her certainty that something was wrong, even though nothing was.
- Passenger misreads something because it doesn’t match U.S. formatting.
- Posts confidently.
- Millions watch video. Airline gets dragged.
@comfywith_kerry EXPIRED food on Canada Air #flight #traveltiktok #airplanefood #flights #ohno @canadaairline ♬ Welp, Didn't Expect That – Yu-Peng Chen & HOYO-MiX
In fairness, we’ve certainly seen United serve expired food. That problem dates back to the early days of buy on board. In 2022, American Airlines served pre-pandemic pretzels.
I’ve written about American Airlines serving 16 month old curry vegetables. American told me at the time that while that was within industry norms, they were working with catering vendors to provide meals that were made within 40-60 days. Nigella Lawson says not to freeze curries more than three months.
Before the pandemic the U.S. industry standard for meals aging was that United would serve meals up to 6 months, Delta 12 months, and American 18 months. And – while I still believe it was a labeling error – easyJet served a cheese sandwich that expired 10 years earlier.
If Air Canada is going to serve Americans, I guess they need to have caterers label expiration dates with the months spelled out? The key takeaway though is that you cannot assume the world works the same way abroad that it does at home.
Most of the world uses Microsoft Windows. Windows uses the American date system. It’s tricky in Canada, because officially we use DDMMYYYY, but more often than not we follow MMDDYYYY in the context of a computer file.
Microsoft Windows has a lot of flexibility in adjusting regional preferences if you go into settings. Of course, many people are lazy (or ignorant) so they do not customize their computer.
“Canada, like most of the planet, uses day/month/year. “05/11/2025” is 5 November, not May 11.”
Were it to be so simple!
Both MMDDYY and DDMMYY are in common use in Canada, even in French. (Even my francophone partner uses MMDDYY, which is a source of marital strain.) Because both orders are common, to avoid ambiguity, the Government of Canada style guide requires the use of YYYY-MM-DD in official documents, which is also the recommended international standard (ISO 8601).
Also common on Canadian food packages is to see two letters for the month rather than numbers; this reduces ambiguity, too—so long as you know MA is May and not March (MR), since they need to use abbreviations that work in both official languages.
On the flip side if she got food poisoning (yes a horrible experience) she’d have a nice lawsuit.
@Raphael Solomon – Over been using computers since I was a child and have always used UK date formatting.
Most programing languages let you set a default locale too.
Didn’t expect to read about Nigella on this page.
I would love for everyone to switch to YYYYMMDD as well but I’m mostly ok with anything. Whenever there’s a chance of confusion I use Nov 6, 2025 or something like that.
Very few countries besides the USA use this date format. Philippines, Belize, Palau, Micronesia, and U.S. territories. This person was right to question it.
Perhaps the USA can catch up to the rest of the world when they switch to the metric system. There are only 3 countries in the world that have not adopted at least a part of the metric system. United States
Uses US customary units (miles, pounds, gallons, Fahrenheit).
Metric is used in science, medicine, the military, and some industries.
Liberia
Officially transitioning to metric but still uses imperial/customary units in daily life (miles, gallons).
Myanmar (Burma)
Historically used traditional Burmese units.
Signs and commerce often mix imperial, metric, and Burmese measures.
The country has announced metrication but implementation is incomplete.
@raphael, @jns
Windows asks for your location when it’s installed. It should always have your correctly localized date format, unless it was bought from a country other than the one in which it’s used. (Annoyingly, this DOES often mean that initial setup of computers used in Canada has American localization!)
American hubris. It’s simply embarrassing.
@George Romey — See, no middle name or initial this time! Doubtful she’d have much of a lawsuit; probably the evidence would get confiscated like J.A.R.’s Nightshade incident with DL.
“Pray for me” and “message from Jesus”?!?! I bet it’s been a hot minute since TikTok Kerry set foot in a church, but her message from Jesus is: “don’t cast the first stone, and don’t bear false witness.”
The metric system is a mishmash because the time element is not in powers of 10. The day still has to be defined as one rotation of the Earth but 10 hours could be a day and 100 minutes an hour and 100 seconds a minute. A lot of scientific numbers would have to be adjusted but the result would be more inline with how the metric system is supposed to work.
If Air Canada is going to allow Thai Citizens on board, they should use the Thai wau and show an expiration date on 2568 BE The current Thai calendar year is 2568 BE (Buddhist Era).
Or alternatively, when people travel, they should be open to things being different in other parts of the world… or else, they can stay in their redneck part of Alabama.
@Mark – the UK uses imperial AND metric. Road distance is measured in miles but COVID distancing was 2 meters, and people talk about walking 100 meters to a shop.. Gas (petrol) is sold in litres but motor vehicle performance is measured in miles per gallon. As a Brit, growing up at school and home it was stones, pounds, ounces, inches, feet, yards, miles, pints and gallons. In the US, stones aren’t known (14lbs =1stone), and even the pint is only 16 fl oz as opposed to the UKs 20 fl oz. And I’ve lived in the US for 23.5 years, so far.
The best way to avoid confusion is YYYY-MM-DD.
By the way, Canada is stupid. Air Canada is a dumb airline.
For what it’s worth, the U.S. military and, internally U.S. airlines use the more common standard of D/M/Y. To avoid confusion in “mixed company” many organizations use D/M/Y but use the three letter abbreviation for the month.
All I can say is ISO 8601 … the only correct date format is YYYY-MM-DD .. Look up XKCD 1179 – ISO 8601.
Especially when it comes to computer files such as logs. If you use ISO 8601 for file name formatting they are sorted oldest to newest even with any background
Pretty simple, the military figured this out a long time ago.
NATO designation.
28NOV2025 would be today.
5NOV2025 would have been the correct and non ambiguous way to express this.
Shame on Canada for thinking the whole world uses THEIR system. That shaming thing goes both ways.
@derek — No, Canada is smart, our neighbor and ally, and Air Canada is a decent airline, sometimes with incredible partner award redemptions. At least Canada has APPR air passenger rights legislation (like EU261), while we in the US have nothing.
Don’t sugar coat it. It’s embarrassing, not because she misread the date but she made a video with her face in it misreading the date. Ignorance may be fleeting but the internet is forever.
Solved this years ago with our manufacturing company for putting best before dates on consumables – today’s date reads 2025/NO/28 . Never have a problem.
Most countries uses YYYYMMDD, both DDMMYYYY and MMDDYYYY are outdated formats
@Creditian
Thank you… the correct answer… AND most logical
I’m a fan of YYYY.MM.DD but… that is just my dyslexic self trying to make life easier 😛
The great thing about standards is there’s so many to pick from.