Asiana Airline flights delayed over in-flight meals shortage

SEOUL, July 3 (UPI) -- Flights of Asiana Airlines, the second biggest airline company in South Korea, have been delayed due to in-flight meal shortages since Sunday.

Hit by growing complaints, Asiana CEO Kim Soo-cheon released an apology letter on the company website on Tuesday.

"While we were preparing to launch a new meal service with the global catering company 'Gate Gourmet,' fire broke at the company's factory," said Kim, in the letter.

"We secured an alternative supplier who could provide the number of in-flight meals we need, but we had an expected confusion over packaging and delivery on our first day, which resulted in delays of a few flights and some departing without meals," he said.

Passengers aboard an Asiana Airlines flight experienced an hour delay on Tuesday morning due to the meal trouble and eight flights took off without meals, Yonhap reported.

Suspicion has grown over the three-month deal Asiana Airlines signed with a local supplier. The head of the catering company was found dead in an apparent suicide on Monday.

The local catering company, capable of only providing 3,000 meals per day, was asked to produce 30,000 meals for Asiana Airlines, News 1 reported. And the local supplier suffered extremely longer working hours and burden to meet the meal requests, according to local news reports.