Air India business class swaps the tray for plated courses

Air India business class passengers on flights between India and the UK no longer receive their meal on a single tray: since 22 October 2026 the airline serves appetisers, mains and desserts as separate, individually plated courses on linen-laid tables.

The service started on routes to London Heathrow, London Gatwick and Birmingham, according to the airline's announcement as reported by Business Today and PAX International. Air India says it will extend it progressively across select long-haul and ultra-long-haul flights operated with Airbus A350, Boeing 787-9 and Boeing 777-300 aircraft.

The airline calls it restaurant-style fine dining. In practice the change is about order and pace: one course at a time, cleared and replaced by the crew, instead of the whole meal arriving at once. Air India presents it as a slower meal, with more freedom for passengers to decide how they move through it.

Air India changed the plates and the pace; the food on them is still unnamed.

Air India business class gets its own plates

Most of the detail in the announcement concerns tableware. The Vista Verve set used in Air India business class now includes dedicated plates for appetisers, main courses, snacks, desserts and cheese, a signature glass and an espresso cup designed for the service. The centrepiece is a cruet set shaped after the Martaban, the traditional Indian jar used to preserve food and, as the airline puts it, family recipes.

Rajesh Dogra, the airline's chief customer experience officer, described the course-by-course service as another step in Air India's transformation and said the goal is “a globally benchmarked premium travel experience” rooted in Indian hospitality, according to India TV and Business Today.

The new format sits on top of earlier changes: refreshed food and beverage menus, a wine selection the airline describes as award-winning and an upgraded tea offer. It also follows the delivery of new A350 and 787-9 aircraft and the retrofit of older single-aisle and twin-aisle jets with new cabins and interiors.

What the airline did not announce

The announcement names no chef, no menu partner and no single dish. It gives no figure for the cost of the programme, for how many weekly flights now carry it or for when it reaches routes beyond the UK. For a launch billed as fine dining, the cooking is the one element missing from the brief.

On the ground, Indian cooking is being reframed in restaurants such as Makaan, Samyukta Nair's Gujarati restaurant in Mumbai, and even airport dining now makes news with appointments like Gary Caldwell's at One Flew South. In Air India business class, the first thing passengers will notice is not a new recipe but the number of plates on the table.