Mozzarella in transit

[james]

I took our pets to Rome airport yesterday to catch their flight back to CA. They are connecting through Paris and are spending the night in the animal transit lounge, which is supposed to be nice. French food for dogs and cats?

Anyway, I was at the check in area, where they also do express freight, and the largest single item that was being shipped was styrofoam boxes of Mozzarella di Bufala. There were pallets of it. I can picture this. It was made at 4AM from fresh milk, on the road at 5AM, and ready to fly to NY at 8AM in Rome. Catch a flight to NY at noon, and you are in NY in time for dinner.

What I don't know is how cold they get it for the trip. Does anyone know how they do that?

Not bad.
James

[dmun]

Re: Mozzarella in transit

This place, Lioni Latticini, is headquatered in Brooklyn, and has a warehouse about ten minutes from me in Jersey. They claim to get shipments of fresh bufala every Wednesday, so that may well have been their cheese that you saw.

[james]

Re: Mozzarella in transit

Thanks David,
I just sent them an email to introduce our group. Maybe we can get a group discount.
James

[jengineer]

Re: Mozzarella in transit

When we were certifying the MD-11 the planes were not in their final confguration. No ceiling palnels no side panels no insulation. You stay away from the door with all the wiring around it because those are explosiuves, just in case ou need to bail out quicklyy. Parachutes were optional but no-one checked them ouot becasue if you did manage to get out of the plane you would probably be cut in 2 by the horizontal tail. On the DC-10 they had a man hole tube that you could bail out from. The plane took off from Yuma in June and it was blazing hot. By the time we got to cruising altitude, 35,000 feet and above, the plane starts to cool down. The outside air at that elevation is a mere -65 F/-54.3C. This is why stowaways in wheel wells freeze, that and the fact that the O2 content at elevation is limited - thus you cabin is pressurised anywhere between 8 to 10,000 feet. On a few flights we had a bit of humidity and actually has "snow" coming of of the air vents. Artic parkas in the middle of June in Yuma are an odd site.

Although you are flying in a tin can you can have 2 comfort zones. The upper deck can be maintained at a humane level while the below deck can have no air conditioning. If what you saw was going on a cargo flight then the temp is easily controlled. To save $$ it is cheaper to not have to run the a/c sytem for the whole aircraft. You can put up flex walls to isolate the limited crew area from the rest of the aircraft. Think Tom Hanks in Castaway