CATHAY Pacific Catering Services this week formally opened a new joint venture, an in-flight-meals kitchen in Vietnam housed in a former US military hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.
The former wartime hospital wards have been dramatically transformed into a hi-tech kitchen to rival even that operated by Cathay in Hong Kong.
It has been a long time since wounded US airmen have been rolled on stretchers down the building's corridors, though the layout is still much the same.
The building was left empty for many years after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, before first being turned into an air catering base by Vietnam's civil aviation authority a few years ago.
Until Cathay was brought in, conditions in the building were little short of embarrassing.
International airlines flying into Ho Chi Minh City preferred to load enough meals for both their inward and outward bound operations in their own countries rather than reloading in Vietnam.
