The British airline Handley Page Transport launched the world's first formal in-flight catering service on its London-to-Paris route, offering wealthy passengers pre-packaged cold chicken and sandwiches served in small wicker baskets. This milestone marked the birth of aviation dining, requiring chefs to design foods that could withstand extreme high-altitude atmospheric pressure, dry air, and engine vibration without spoiling. It symbolized the absolute pinnacle of early twentieth-century technological luxury and hyper-mobility.

The unique sensory experience of dining high above the clouds while looking down at the earth profoundly fascinated early Futurist and Modernist poets, who celebrated aviation as the ultimate triumph of human speed over gravity. Poets incorporated descriptions of airplane meals into their verses to construct a new, fragmented literary aesthetic that captured the exciting, disorienting sensations of global transit and technological detachment.