Planning in-flight meals is complex process, in which airlines have to ensure that frequent flyers don't end up with the same meal twice.
Airline Qantas has revealed that at any one time, they have 220 meal options available on their domestic network and in the business class cabin, there are six variations of menus for each of the four different times of day with three choices available for each main meal, News.com.au reported.
The planning schedule is managed centrally so that the menus are moved around the network every week, making sure to avoid directly switching them between ports on common commuter routes.
Helen Gray, Qantas Head of National Product and Service Delivery, said that on some morning flights between Perth and the east coast their cabin crew can even make freshly scrambled eggs in the business cabin.
The in-flight menus are then redesigned every six months with new recipes, ingredients and flavours.
She noted that every dish has been designed, tasted or influenced by Neil Perry's Rockpool consulting team at the industrial kitchen in Qantas' Mascot headquarters.
Over 12 months, Qantas serves up on its domestic flights around 8000kg of smoked almonds, almost 140,000 tubs of Maggie Beer Ice Cream, four million milk chocolate Lindt balls, or 50,000kg per year, which is close to 1000kg of Lindt chocolates every week, around 2.5 million breakfast boxes, around 3.5 million cookies, more than 2.5 million ice creams and more than 8.5 million 250ml cans of soft drink.