Family Orders Domino’s To The Airport To Avoid High Prices—Brings Pizza Through TSA And Onto The Plane

Airport food is expensive, so one man decided to feed his family by ordering Domino’s Pizza to the airport. Their flight was delayed and they “didn’t want to pay airport food prices.” Over 13 million people have watched the video.

• They met the Domino’s driver curbside at the airport
  
• Then they brought the pizzas through TSA security. Pizza is not a liquid!
  
• They brought the boxes onto the plane and ate their slices on board.

Credit: Ali Van De Graaff

Credit: Ali Van De Graaff

This is being described as an ‘airport food hack’ but it’s pretty controversial, because it’s pizza.

• Some see it as genius. “why have I never thought of this,” “traveling with kids requires smart decisions.” Concessions have to pay huge rents in the airport. Labor costs are high because you need people who can pass background checks for security and you need to get them to commute out to the airport and park. Then, most of the food is bad because of airport constraints (no storage space, potentially no gas cooking, knives chained to walls, having to bring ingredients through security and because you’re selling to the median traveler who has to be there and chooses you because you exist not because you’re offering good food).

• This is downright rude. Main character syndrome. The smell in the cabin isn’t fair to everyone else. Plus, pizza is greasy and do you really expect to give the used pizza boxes to a flight attendant as they collect trash? Eating it in the terminal is clearly fine but this isn’t what fellow passengers want you bringing on board. Check out this guy who brought a full rack of ribs on board!

  No chance is the guy next to me eating a full rack of ribs plus sides on this plane gtf pic.twitter.com/hDD9u6MlPi

  — Lanna Tolland (@lannatolland) February 20, 2023

• Skepticism. People are surprised they could bring the food through security. And this is surely a pain for the driver, but not really. They met the driver curbside! They didn’t park, walk into the terminal and then try to find the customer.

  There are limits on liquids and gels through security. There shouldn’t be any longer! Peanut butter is viewed as a liquid by TSA because it ‘conforms to the shape of its package’. But pizza is not a liquid.

I guess my question is, if you aren’t limiting yourself to airport food and even if you want pizza it could be from anywhere. Why on earth Domino’s?

A lot of airports have Grab and similar apps that let you order delivery, ‘DoorDash for airports’ because they know passengers go anchor themselves to their gate and won’t spend money as a result unless what they want gets brought to them.

If you’re eating Domino’s anyway, maybe pizza delivery from inside the airport is even easier and not that much more money if it’s an airport that isn’t Phoenix (which doesn’t even have “street pricing” rules). Although pizza in the Miami airport can actually be even worse than Domino’s.

Ordering pizza to the airport, though, isn’t actually that unusual. It’s just usually pilots who are doing it – for the whole plane, during major delays. Here’s a Delta flight that diverted and had pizza delivered by police car. An American flight diverted, the pilot ordered 40 pizzas and ran out to meet the driver. And on this American Eagle diversion, the captain had pizza delivered to the plane.

Here American Airlines chose Pizza Hut as their caterer for the flight. There was a catering issue, so they bought the pizzas from the Pizza Hut in the terminal.

Fourteen years ago I catered an American Airlines Boeing 757 from inside the Seattle airport. It was a charter flight (“oneworld MegaDO”) and our aircraft went mechanical. All of the catering had been offloaded to make room for more alcohol (and because the original plan had been for everyone on the flight to get full business class meals, which took took long on our prior Dallas – Seattle segment). There were packaged snacks for everyone at the at the gate, but with the delay and drinks on the ground we needed food.

We drank the plane dry during the delay and we raided the nearby aircraft. A tug was sent to the edge of the airport to go get more from a liquor store. I went into the terminal in search of food. First class got personal pizzas while I bribed the bagel shop to give us all their sandwiches (which meant staff they’d need to stay late to prep more). The station manager pulled out his airline-issued credit card, so I fortunately didn’t get stuck with the bill.

The scene at the Seattle airport bagel place went something like Woody Allen feeding the revolutionary army in Bananas.

Domino’s Pizza used to promise delivery within 30 minutes. They dropped their guarantee in 1993 because it led drivers to be too aggressive, and they lost a lawsuit to a crash victim. But did you know about the Papa Murphy’s Pizza that delivers by plane? Or that, according to Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Nigerians are ordering pizza from London and having it delivered on British Airways?