JEDDAH, 17 June — Problems at the premises housing the power-supply and cooling systems at Jeddah’s King Abdul Aziz International Airport have disrupted the in-flight food catering service for the past four days. Consequently, work at three important divisions in the Saudi Arabian Airlines has been suspended. An airline source attributed the failure to poor maintenance.
The failure led to the suspension of the catering, cargo and maintenance services. Frantic attempts are under way to restore the services and to reduce financial loss resulting from the failure to fulfill the contractual obligations with the Arab and international airlines.
A source at Saudia’s catering division said the cooling system which supports the huge refrigerators where the food is kept stopped functioning at 3 pm on Tuesday when the temperature of the cooler lines linked to refrigerators rose to 25 degrees C, up from its normal 5 degrees C.
The cause of the failure is attributed to problems in the main building housing the cooling system. International flights have been asked to onload food from Riyadh and Dammam airports until the problem is solved.
In order to bring the situation under control, the catering section has hired 14 industrial refrigerators at a daily rent of SR600 for each. The catering division has also cut down the services for other airline companies and stopped preparing perishable dishes.
Saudia’s catering division, which employs 1,000 workers, prepares 20,000 meals a day, 16,000 of them for Saudia flights alone. It also supplies food to 45 international airline companies. It has been recognized as the best in the region and won the best-airline-caterer award in the Middle East, Near East and Africa ahead of Germany’s Lufthansa.
