Catering to your aircraft in Lac La Biche.
CYLB is quiet most of the day and busy when a lodge party or an oil-patch crew arrives. Whitefish and bison are on the menu, and everything is boxed for a small galley and an honest turnaround.
We know the galley, the diet card and the 5 a.m. re-plate — because we lived them. So we built the caterer we always wished we could call.
Fourteen years on VIP and head-of-state cabins. Can plate for twelve in a G650 galley and still land it hot.
The one who reads every diet card twice. If it says no cross-contact, it means no cross-contact.
Answers at 5 a.m. when the leg moved overnight. Same-day swaps are her love language.
Alberta's lake country gives a private jet menu at Lac La Biche its own character: lake whitefish, pickerel, bison from the prairie ranches, wild rice and saskatoon berries. These are the local specialities we build the inflight menu around, so private jet food at CYLB tastes of the region rather than of a generic tray.
Private jet platters here lean on smoked whitefish, bison charcuterie, Alberta cheddar and fresh prairie vegetables, arranged for sharing at altitude. Gourmet inflight meals follow the season: pickerel with lemon butter in summer, braised bison short rib in winter. Private jet snacks stay simple, with saskatoon berry bars, roasted seeds and bannock-style bread.
Every dish is packed for the galley you actually have, and the notes on each tell the flight attendant what finishes in the oven, what stays cold and what sauce goes apart.
Tail, pax, diets, timing. One message — no portal, no quote form. Answered at any hour, by a flight attendant.
Leak-proof boxes, marked by guest and restriction, with reheating times written on the lid.
Two minutes out of the drawer. Whatever you ordered for the crew comes in the same delivery, and one clean invoice follows.
Lac La Biche sits at 1,884 ft above sea level on the edge of Alberta's boreal lakes, a small strip where a light jet or turboprop arrives with a short turnaround and a galley that is often just a drawer. Private jet catering at CYLB is built around that: a box that opens cleanly, a plate that re-plates in seconds, and local lake and prairie products on the menu. Inflight catering and in-flight catering here lean on whitefish, bison and berries, while aviation catering for the crew stays simple and sealed. Business aviation catering for oil-patch and fishing-lodge trips, executive jet catering for owners heading to the lakes, diplomatic flight catering when a delegation stops over, and cabin crew meals for the long duty day all follow the same plain method.
Business jet catering at CYLB is usually a brief for a light jet carrying four to six guests bound for the lakes or the oil patch. Corporate jet catering here favours hearty plates: a private jet chef will build a bespoke menu around whitefish, bison and berries. VIP flight catering and charter flight catering follow the same method as luxury inflight catering anywhere: one sealed tray per seat, with the sauce in its own pot.
When a delegation stops at CYLB, the work is quiet. State visit aircraft catering is cleared with protocol, head of state flight catering uses traceable Alberta ingredients, government flight catering is boxed in sealed trays, and VIP aviation catering is delivered to the aircraft without fuss.
Special meals at Lac La Biche are a procedure adapted to Alberta's kitchen, where the hidden allergens sit in wheat flour, canola oil, mustard and tree nuts in berry bakes. Kosher, halal, vegan and gluten free requests are cooked on separate boards and sealed in their own boxes, allergen free meals are packed apart from every other tray, and kids meals come in portions sized for small hands. Tell us the restriction and the seat number and the box is marked for that seat only.
A sheet per guest. Separate boards, separate boxes.
Sealed, certificate in the same box.
Their own menu, nothing to cut at altitude.
Vegan, low-carb, light — composed, never compromised.
A crew waiting at CYLB for a lodge party needs food that holds. Crew meals are a catalogue item, ordered with the flight and billed with it. Flight crew meals and pilot meals travel in crew meal boxes marked CREW, cockpit meals are packed for eating at the controls, and different meals for pilots are prepared when two dishes are needed. Crew catering stays separate from the guest order, and cabin crew meals have their own box.
At CYLB the general aviation terminal is the point of handover. FBO catering is brought to the door, the handling agent walks it airside, and ground handling catering stays out of your way. Catering delivery to the FBO is arranged to your slot, and handling agent catering questions are answered day or night.
At CYLB the aircraft on the apron settles whether boxes go up by hand or by lift. A light jet or turboprop takes boxes through a low door by hand, with no lift required; a larger business aircraft may need a high loader if the door sill is high. Galley catering is packed to the oven and drawer you actually have, and airside catering delivery is arranged with your handling agent. Aircraft provisioning on a small field like this is mostly a question of fitting the order to the galley.
Mention it when you orderCertified, inspected, with cold-chain records filed against your trip.
Whichever terminal you park at, handover is at the aircraft, on your slot.
Allergen sheet per guest, halal and kosher on request, sealed and labelled.
Itemised and trip-report ready, sent after the leg.
Lac La Biche Airport (CYLB / YLB) serves a lake district in northeast Alberta. As airport catering goes, it is a small field with a general aviation apron and a short runway. The FBO services are modest, the ground handling services are sized to light aircraft, and the work is about fitting a good meal into a small galley.
Lac La Biche is not a business aviation hub in the Teterboro sense, but general aviation traffic arrives for fishing lodges, forestry work and oil-patch crews, and the FBO services and ground handling services follow that rhythm. Inflight catering, in-flight catering and aviation catering here are sized for light jets; business aviation catering and executive jet catering for a corporate party; diplomatic flight catering and cabin crew meals are handled the same way as anywhere else, with crew meals boxed apart.
Canada controls the import of meat, dairy and fresh produce, so food arriving from abroad can be inspected or refused. General aviation at Lac La Biche clears through the usual channels, with FBO services and ground handling services working alongside border officers; catering sourced locally avoids the question altogether.
Average rating from the cabin crew and pilots we cater for.
“Having 9 guests request a selection of petits fours and sandwiches at YLB meant planning the portions carefully while accounting for a short ground stop. I asked The Galley Girls for the side dishes in sealed meal containers, with garnishes supplied separately for plating on board. For airport catering, that attention to portion planning made the order noticeably easier to manage. Keeping the main courses aside until service helped preserve the presentation while we dealt with the boarding tasks.”
“It was the packing plan I cared about at Lac La Biche Airport, with 2 servings of vegetarian wraps and colourful salads and several individual meal preferences to consider. I appreciated the emphasis on portion planning throughout the inflight catering arrangements. The desserts supplied by The Galley Girls were straightforward to check against the written menu before the cabin handover. The canapés were also listed clearly, which made it easier to pass instructions between crew members during preparation.”
“Packing grilled salmon with a lemon dressing for 2 passengers at CYLB needed careful thought, especially given a short ground stop. With in-flight catering, careful attention to catering handover matters as much to our crew as the menu itself. The Galley Girls talked through the quantities of snack boxes with us before confirmation, rather than leaving us to guess the portions. There was enough information about the main courses to brief the crew without making assumptions about what had been ordered.”
Think of it as a dish-by-dish total. At Lac La Biche, wild-caught fish and bison weigh more on the invoice than a salad, and a special-meal request is priced like any other plate. How much does private jet catering cost? The answer is the sum of the plates you choose.
A long wait on the ground changes what we send, not how soon you must call. Tell us the duty limit and the slot and we adapt: sealed hot meals for the oven, cold plates that sit in the drawer. Orders placed late are still processed.
Departure slot first, customs second. If the aircraft is leaving for another country, food from outside may be restricted on arrival there, so we label each box and tell you what can travel. At Lac La Biche the handover is at the FBO, in sealed trays, with no loose items.
You can bring food, within the customs rules of the destination, but at CYLB a single local product often does more than a home-packed box: smoked whitefish or saskatoon berries from Alberta add something no suitcase meal can. Can you bring food? Yes; can we improve it with a local product? Usually.
A private jet charter into CYLB does not include food unless you arrange it, and it is invoiced separately when you do. Canadian import rules limit what can enter from other countries, so local catering is cleaner for customs and fresher on the plate.
Tail, pax and diets — a flight attendant takes it from there, day or night.
