Employees Say LAX Airline Caterer Served Meals On Dishes Found With Mold, Maggots And Flies

A longtime dish-room employee at Flying Food Group’s Inglewood kitchen opened an airline cart on June 23 and found dozens of dishes still holding decomposing food. The bowls were covered in thick mold and what she believed were live maggots and flies. She asked to throw the dishes away. A supervisor refused, according to a 16-page complaint filed with CalOSHA by union UNITE HERE Local 11. The supervisor allegedly said the dishes were needed to plate food for an upcoming flight and ordered her to run them through the industrial dishwasher. Upscaled photo from UNITE HERE complaint Workers describe cockroaches near food and airline carts, black growth across the dishroom ceiling, restrooms without soap (not how you want workers making your food!), dangerously hot work areas and delivery trucks with broken chillers. The union submitted dated photographs, video and worker accounts and asked CalOSHA for an expedited on-site inspection. No passenger meal has been shown to be contaminated and no passenger illness has been tied to these photos. Flying Food Group has a recent record of formal safety citations as well. One Cart Was Only The Beginning Flying Food Group says it operates more than 19 catering facilities and describes its operation as backed by an “uncompromising food safety culture.” At LAX, airlines including Lufthansa, Air France, SWISS, Virgin Atlantic, Austrian, LOT Polish, SAS, Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, ANA, Starlux, China Southern, Qantas, Air New Zealand and Hawaiian Airlines use them. American turned to Flying Food Group during the 2017 Gate Gourmet listeria disruption at LAX. Gate Gourmet is another caterer that has had problems! It picked up American’s Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney and Auckland flights, although American planned to move those widebody international flights to Air Fayre by mid-February 2018. The new complaint covers the company’s central kitchen at 901 W. Hillcrest Boulevard and its warehouse and flight kitchen at 5343 W. Imperial Highway. Among its allegations: The employee who handled the decomposing dishes says she wore several pairs of gloves but received no mask or respirator. She reported stomach pain, a headache and an unusual sensation in her nose. She also worried that putting the dishes through the machine could contaminate its water, but says she was ordered to do it anyway. A worker recorded what she believed was a cockroach beside a dish-room trash can on June 24. She says dirty carts can sit beside one dishwasher for days or weeks, creating a fermented smell and attracting flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches. The same worker photographed apparent cockroaches in the kitchen and on a Lufthansa cart in December. Other workers documented apparent insects near the apron-and-hairnet changing area on July 6 and near the cafeteria and time clock on July 30. Another worker says she saw them where bread, meat, fruit and peanuts were stored. A union representative photographed black growth across the dish-room ceiling on August 3. The complaint says an airline representative on a walkthrough identified it as mold, while a company representative was overheard denying that it was mold. That overheard exchange is not an official company response. At least four workers say bathrooms or handwashing stations repeatedly lacked soap or paper towels. Two say they had to leave the bathroom and search elsewhere for soap before returning to work. Dish-room employees describe steam and humidity like a sauna, with headaches, dehydration and one near-fainting. They allege the temperature becomes tolerable during some inspections and then rises again afterward. Workers also allege broken refrigeration units in catering trucks, increased use of dry ice to compensate, and no proper dry-ice gloves—forcing drivers to use paper napkins and causing burns. They describe standing water, crowded coolers and blocked pathways, and say incoming-shift employees are sometimes held in the cafeteria until airline inspection teams leave. One former worker says debris fell onto leftover rice from an international flight, the visibly affected portion was removed, and the rest was sent to the employee cafeteria. Another employee says she vomited and had diarrhea for three days after eating pork ribs at work. A chef later allegedly told her he had refused to cook the ribs because they were expired, but someone else cooked them. The complaint also points to a February county health inspection recording a major hot- and cold-holding temperature violation, but it’s not clear which Flying Food Group kitchen was involved. Flying Food Group Has Not Answered The New Allegations As of Friday morning, Flying Food Group had not provided a public response to the new complaint. The company has answered separate allegations before. After workers raised fire and evacuation concerns earlier this year, Flying Food Group said no one had been trapped in a cooler, exits and evacuation routes were not blocked, managers guided workers out safely, and the company conducts drills and maintains fire equipment. It said it investigates concerns and cooperates with regulators. In 2015, when unannounced FDA inspections at its LAX operation found food- and sanitizing-machine temperature problems, dirty employee restrooms and clutter that could harbor pests (although the inspector saw no pests) Flying Food Group said the cited problems had been corrected. It accused Local 11 of making false allegations to disrupt its business and pointed to a surprise airline-commissioned inspection that scored the kitchen 96 out of 100. On May 20, CalOSHA issued six citations with $74,000 in proposed penalties across the two LAX-serving facilities. Regulators said cold-storage rooms at both sites lacked doors that could be opened from the inside and accessible audible and visual alarms. They also cited a missing emergency eyewash and body-flush station at a battery-charging area and an unguarded chain drive on a commercial dishwasher. This Is Part Of A Contract Dispute With The Union Local 11 and Flying Food Group are in a long-running labor dispute. Their contract expired in 2022, and the sanitation complaint says the union has proposed workplace safety terms the company rejected. The union is trying to gain leverage by publicizing this. I previously noted that a Flying Food Group employee filed federal charges accusing Local 11 representatives of harassment, intimidation and physical confrontation over her opposition to the union. The union also makes much of LAX granting Flying Food Group only a six-month license extension. That’s something the union itself pushed for. Topics on this page