Is the 'Muslim Meal' on Airplanes Halal? (Part 2)

The formation of the Muslim meal:

Changes to meet customer needs

Airlines are interested in providing special meals to create a higher perceived value for their customers. As early as 1970, British Airways began offering vegetarian meals to first-class passengers.

With the development of adding specialty dietary menus (for example, gluten-free, salt-free, etc.), the number of menus and the number of customer preferences involved have also grown.

In a phone interview, Michael White, Vice President of Government and Industry Affairs at the Cargo Department of the International Air Transport Association, told Salaam Gateway that at one time Chicago-based United Airlines offered a menu of more than 20 specialty dishes, but now only 10 are available.

Some travelers, even if they are not Muslim, like Halal meals; they enjoy exploring different cuisines. Apparently, this blogger confirmed this: 'I always request the Muslim/Halal meal on most flights; it is usually some form of 'ethnic' cuisine, which is great compared with the usual ordinary dishes.'

The increasing familiarity with Halal as an ideal specialty choice even verifies the popularity of Halal in the United States—from the New York food cart business spreading nationwide into brick-and-mortar restaurants featuring Middle Eastern cuisine with white sauce as a specialty, arousing the purchasing desire of many Americans. Often restaurants have many customers queuing outside waiting to eat their Halal meals.

Growth market

Tourism is a growth industry. The International Air Transport Association confirmed that compared with 2015, demand for air travel in 2016 rose 6.3% year-on-year. IATA said this growth rate exceeded the ten-year average growth rate of 5.5%.

Trisha Ramdihal of DO&Co, banquet head and full-service hotel supplier with 30 gourmet kitchens in 11 countries across three continents, reported to delegates at the IFANCA conference held in Chicago in April 2017 that demand for Halal meals grew by more than 38% between 2013-14 and 2016-17. She also indicated that IATA said the global number of international travelers is expected to grow to 7 billion by 2030.

Halal and Muslim travel expert CrescentRating estimated that 121 million Muslims traveled internationally in 2016, planning for this number to reach 157 million by 2020.

Need for change?

More and more people realize that the necessity and consistency of Halal certification is a movement that can only be properly tracked and monitored by Halal certification among OIC member states to maintain their Halal ecosystem and Halal consumers.

The purpose of these developments is to ensure that all stakeholders in the food supply chain can comply with Halal standards, including inspecting production and logistics processes so that Halal products are not contaminated.

Based on these developments, considering that Muslim air travelers are showing a growth trend and will bring a huge market, airlines also have the motivation to explore solutions for Halal-certified meals.

When asked how to change the specialty dish code descriptor MOML to the HLML industry code that more accurately represents Halal-certified food, IATA's White clarified that the solution requires airlines to deliberate at the Passenger Services Conference to advance this agenda. The next meeting will be held in Barcelona, Spain, from October 24 to 26.

Airlines are the main body for changing the MOML Muslim meal to the certified HLML Halal meal.

Professor Bilal Jonathan Wilson, a spiritual leader of Halal branding, sees positive incentives for airlines to draft a resolution for IATA to revise the current code. 'The word 'Halal' has become a standard, related to food consumption, and now many products carry the halal label—therefore, a code inconsistent with this makes no sense today,' he said.

'This would also make marketing sense, because Muslim consumers can review and promote them on multiple social media platforms,' he added.

IATA's White said individual airlines can request to change the code through a resolution, but airlines need to know consumers' intentions. Consumers can inform airlines by directly contacting the airline's customer relations department, telling the airline whether they want Halal-certified meals on the plane, and by creating an IATA resolution to enable HLML to replace the current MOML Muslim meal code, in order to improve the specialty dish.