Qantas has developed a sophisticated process for planning inflight menus so that there are always more than 220 meal options flying around the domestic network at any one time, which means even the most frequent flyers could potentially never get the same meal twice.

In the business cabin, there are six variations of menus for each of the four different times of day – breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper – and each variation offers three choices of main meal.

The menu planning schedule is managed centrally to move menus around the network every week, making sure to avoid directly switching them between ports on common commuter routes, such as Sydney and Melbourne.

Head of National Product and Service Helen Gray said; “This means a business customer flying from Melbourne to Sydney on Monday; Sydney to Adelaide on Wednesday; and Adelaide back to Melbourne on Friday, will see a different selection of menu choices on each of these flights.”

Every six months, the full suite of inflight menus are redesigned to include new recipes with a new variation of ingredients and flavours.

“By the time your meal gets to your seat, whether you’re travelling in economy or business, every dish has been designed, tasted or influenced by Neil Perry’s Rockpool consulting team at the industrial kitchen in Qantas’ Mascot headquarters,” Ms Gray said.

Here’s what has been served on Qantas domestic flights over the past 12 months.

In Business:

• Around 8000 kg of smoked almonds.
• Almost 140,000 tubs of Maggie Beer Ice Cream – the most popular is Burnt Fig and Honey, which makes up one third of this figure.

In Economy:

• 4 million milk chocolate Lindt balls, or 50,000kg per year, which is close to 1000kg of Lindt chocolates every week.
• Around 2.5 million breakfast boxes.
• Around 3.5 million cookies.
• More than 2.5 million ice creams.
• More than 8.5 million 250ml cans of soft drink from Coca Cola and Schweppes.