How crew avoid food poisoning on a layover

Street food, ice, salads and buffets: what pilots and cabin crew check before they eat overseas, and what to do if a meal goes wrong.

A bad meal on a layover costs you more than a bad night. You might have a duty in 20 hours, and calling in sick from a hotel room in another country is a mess for you and your crew. A few habits cut the odds a long way.

Pick busy places

Crew favourites tend to be busy for a reason. A stall with a queue turns its food over fast, so the noodles you get were cooked minutes ago and didn't sit in the heat. Watch the cook for a minute. If they cook to order in front of you, at a fierce heat, that plate is one of the safer things you can eat in the city.

Hot, cooked and in front of you

The CDC's travel advice keeps it short: food that comes to you hot and fully cooked is the safe bet. Food that sits at room temperature is the risk, which rules out the buffet tray that has stood since breakfast and the rice that went cold before someone fried it again.

Order dishes cooked to order: stir-fries, grills, soups at a rolling boil.
Skip lukewarm buffets, and sauces left out on the table.
Peel fruit yourself. Bananas, oranges and mangoes are fine; pre-cut fruit on ice is a gamble.
Treat raw salads, raw shellfish and rare meat as a risk in places where the tap water isn't safe.

Ice and water

Ice is the one crew forget. In a city where you wouldn't drink the tap water, ice made from it carries the same risk. Ask for drinks with no ice there. Drink water from a sealed bottle, and brush your teeth with it too. Hot tea and coffee made with boiled water are fine.

Check our tap water guide for the cities crew fly to most.

Wash or sanitise your hands

You touch door handles, lift buttons, menus and money on the way to dinner. Wash your hands before you eat, or carry an alcohol hand gel for street stalls with no sink.

Your own rules on the day before a duty

Plenty of crew keep a simple rule: nothing adventurous in the 24 hours before operating. Save the raw oysters and the market stall you've never tried for the first night of a long layover, when you have time to recover.

If a meal goes wrong

Most bouts of travellers' diarrhoea clear up within a week. Drink plenty of bottled water with oral rehydration salts, rest, and eat plain food. See a doctor if you can't keep fluids down, there's blood in your diarrhoea, you still feel dehydrated after rehydration salts, or it lasts more than 7 days. Go to an emergency department for a sudden severe stomach pain, confusion or trouble breathing. Tell your company before your duty, not at the aircraft door, and follow its fitness-for-duty rules. Our guide on getting sick on a layover covers clinics, pharmacies and insurance.

Use what other crew already know

The spots other crew recommend on On Chocks are places they ate and came back from fine, often more than once. If you want food near you that's open now, the crew map is a better start than a random review site.