Is it safe to eat gluten free food on BA flights?

[user1465735540]

Hello
We travel a lot with our 8 year old son who is coeliac and have had awful experiences with BA, where other airlines are good. August 2014 his breakfast on an overnight flight from US was fruit and juice (how do you keep a kid going on that?) and in October 2015 he was given gluten containing food on GF tray on way to Thailand and back (thankfully caught before he ate on both occasions). When he comes into contact with gluten he is violently sick and has stomach pains. BA took months to investigate 1 issue, missing the 2nd, and had to go back and check what went wrong. I sincerely hoped they had addressed issues for sake of coeliac travellers and offered to help, personally and through putting BA in contact with coeliac societies but this was not taken up.
April 2016 our son was fed gluten on GF breakfast tray from Abu Dhabi (didn't catch this one) and he was voiolently sick over me, himself and the plane (thankfully no others) which was distressing for us as a family and other passengers. BA response - we've checked and our standards have been adhered to. Clearly not a happy parent leaving a plane with a sick child and wearing a first class PJ top as my own top was covered in vomit. I wanted to share my experiences with others so that anyone travelling as or with a coeliac knows of the potential dangers associated with gluten free meal trays on BA flights.
Always worth checking all content. Attached are pictures of food we had issues with in October 2015, no pictures from latest incident as was too tired post overnight flight to remember to check.
I hope this helps others travelling with gluten free food needs!

[dementedpixie]

Could you take your own safe snacks so you don't have to rely on the airplane food? We always do that and none of us have allergies

[dementedpixie]

It is bad if they are saying it is gluten free though and then turns out not to be

[NuggetofPurestGreen]

That's crap OP but I do think it's simpler just to take your own food if possible. That's what i do.

[user1465735540]

We always take some snacks and cereals on flights but hard to keep children going on them alone on long haul flights. Cereal is a good filler and we take in a tub so we only need fresh milk.

[NuggetofPurestGreen]

I bring sandwiches and crisps usuallg

[lordsteatime]

we never trust the food on a flight. it passes through many people before it gets on the right plane for the right passenger iyswim

safer to take own food.

have flown long haul, and still took bag of safe food .

[BravoHopeful]

Is there somewhere you can report BA to? It is now illegal to represent food as gluten-free when it isn't. For restaurants, it's the local authority that you report them to - not sure about airlines! Possibly it's the local authority of the area that the head office of BA is located in (since that's the case for restaurant chains).

[Collierl1]

Thanks for your build...definitely an avenue worth following!