Catering personnel meet challenge
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Air Force catering personnel have tested new facilities and gained valuable experience on Exercise Pitch Black 2012.
Personnel from 322 Expeditionary Combat Support Squadron catering section at RAAF Base Tindal and 13 Squadron catering at RAAF Base Darwin worked with United States Marines and Royal New Zealand Air Force cooks to provide day-to-day running of messes, and provide meals to in-flight crews participating in the exercise.
Air Force’s newest in-flight catering facility at Tindal provided more than 200 in-flight meals a day. The facility was built to supply meals to new capabilities, particularly the KC-30A tanker, and will begin working to capacity when the tanker enters full service.
Officer in Charge of catering 322 Expeditionary Combat Support Squadron Tindal, Flying Officer Jason Rixon, was proud of the efforts of his team, which expanded its efforts to cater for the extra 650 personnel on base for the exercise.
“While in-flight food presentation is similar to commercial airline food, I believe ours is better,” Flying Officer Rixon said.
“[It is] nutritionally balanced, fresh and prepared in this very modern facility by cooks who are able to pay more attention to food, because they have the flexibility to prepare their own menus, within nutritional guidelines. They are also able to take advantage of the fresh seasonal foods available at the time, because they have this flexibility.”
The facility also prepared frozen meals for other base elements and these freshly prepared frozen meals were transported to the flight line diner, on the base, for use by members.
“There is a cost saving with this, as other bases have to buy their frozen meals in,” he said.
“For the exercise we had about 11 more staff members to cope with the extra workload which was about double our normal workload. This assistance was our greatest asset in ensuring we delivered catering across the whole spectrum during the exercise.”