Smart catering label wins air industry award

British Airways and Vitsab International have created a new way to ensure food freshness and safety for meals served on airline flights, winning the top prize at the recent International Inflight Food Service Association (IFSA) tradeshow.

The result of this cooperative development is a new type of temperature monitoring system that uses Vitsab International's CheckPoint time-temperature indicator (TTI) in combination with an engineered reporting and response system. The system is called the Flight 17 Smart Label. The CheckPoint TTI is attached to a specially-designed label that allows on-board personnel to check the status of the time and temperature exposure of food modules and document that the signal from the CheckPoint has been read, and that appropriate action has been taken.

Flight 17 Smart Labels enable crew to check the safety of cold food.  Flight labels allow British Airways not only to be legally compliant, but to be more competitive and safe.   Using this new system, the airline can safely return catered meals onboard its fleet of aircraft, some of which have no refrigeration facilities in their on-board galleys.