The airlines with the best and worst in-flight food and drink revealed - with Emirates and Ryanair on the list

Airline food has long had a reputation for offering preheated meat, dry bread and soggy salads to rows of hungry flyers.

Now, new research has revealed the airlines serving the best and worst plane food to passengers to help travellers taking off put their taste buds first.

According to a YouGov survey, Emirates is the king of the cabin kitchen, with 85 per cent of passengers giving a positive review for their in-flight meals and 84 per cent of respondents rating them “very” or “somewhat” good for snacks and drinks.

The survey polled 1,495 UK travellers who have flown with the nine most popular airlines in the country in the last 12 months to create the ranking of plane food providers.

In second place, 82 per cent of Qatar Airways frequent flyers said they had been served a good onboard meal, with a similarly positive performance for its stock of snacks (83 per cent).

The snack flavours of Virgin Atlantic were favoured by 74 per cent of passengers, while flag carrier British Airways scored a 61 per cent rating for its in-flight snacks and drinks and a 63 per cent “good” score for its meals.

In the mid-field, Jet2 (53 per cent) and Tui Airways (50 per cent) scored averagely for snacks with both receiving a 49 per cent rating for their in-flight meals.

At the bottom of the plane food rankings, 50 per cent of Ryanair passengers rated the airline’s food “somewhat” or “very bad” with only 17 per cent of its passengers rating meals positively.

The Irish airline's snacks also saw a bad review with 41 per cent of ratings negative.

Wizz Air fared only slightly better – 23 per cent of travellers described its meals as good, and 40 per cent were less than impressed.

Low-cost carrier easyJet had mixed reviews for meals as 29 per cent of passengers rated them well, while 32 per cent said they were poor.

The best to worst airlines for in-flight meals

1. Emirates
2. Qatar Airways
3. Virgin Atlantic
4. British Airways
5. Jet2.com
6. Tui Airways
7. easyJet
8. Wizz Air
9. Ryanair

For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast