The reason why airlines with flights bound to Asia should serve cup noodles

… Or make it every airline company with every route.

Cup noodles, a humble instant food, ready-to-eat with sodium, carbohydrates in the form of thin noodles, and hot soup that sometimes too hot when we slurped it impatiently as our tummy growls.

Air travel usually is tiring. Exciting, for some and for first-timers and kids, and it’s quick becoming tiring and stressful. The stress quick turns to headaches and cold tummy.

I once mentioned how cup noodles fast becoming my version of The Best Airline Food during my flight from Paris to Ho Chi Minh City. It was my second leg from three-legs flight from Madrid to Kuala Lumpur. I was tired due to lack of sleep and the stress of flying several months after the world recovered from the pandemic started to take its toll on me. It was night time (? I guess? It’s hard to know if it’s night time or day time or what time when you are flying and almost bonkers thanks to timezone weirdness) until I saw a passenger next to me called a flight attendant and requested, “I would like a cup noodles, please.”

I was so tired, manners be damned, and my curiosity got the best of me. “Excuse me. I’m so sorry. I heard you asked for cup noodles to the flight attendant. Is… Is that possible?”

He looked at me and nodded. “Yes. And Vietnam Airlines always serve cup noodles on their flights. I always use their service, you see, because I fly between France to Vietnam on regular basis. I always asking for cup noodles.”

A button pressed, a hand raised, and a, “can I have a cup noodles, please?” And 5 minutes later, I felt like home.

Just recently, my family and I went back to Indonesia for Eid and a vacation. We used TransNusa airlines. They are fairly new with the international flights. They have been handling Indonesia’s domestic flights for East Indonesia area, and it has been a fresh 4-5 months of their international flight on Jakarta – Kuala Lumpur route.

It was an evening flight, and the passengers were anxious to board. Our flight gate had to change because the flight before ours got canceled and the passengers got stuck at the boarding area. Despite the ordeals, the flight took off with only 5 minutes late from the scheduled time.

As a low cost carrier (LCC,) TransNusa does not include meals on their tickets, but passengers can purchase on-board meals. Most of us were hungry and tired. As for me, I had a headache.

Was it a good dinner? It was nothing much, but it was great.