As is generally known, food and beverages are offered and served to air passengers during flights. The food service items are generally cold-stored in catering transport containers, i.e. so-called trolleys, from which the food items are usually also served. Except during the actual service periods, the food service trolleys are stowed in a galley, and are further cooled by corresponding cooling arrangements. The total number of galley areas or stowage areas for food service trolleys provided in an aircraft is essentially dependent upon the number of passengers and the particular intended utilization of the aircraft, for example, for long intercontinental flights or alternatively for short haul flights. The galleys are typically arranged at various locations within the aircraft cabin in such a manner that the distribution of meals and beverages to passengers can be achieved in the shortest amount of time and with the shortest involved transport distance.
A known arrangement for cooling each individual food service trolley is to have cooling air inlets and outlets on each trolley, which are supplied with cold air produced by a compression air chiller plant, for example. Typically in the known art, an autonomous cooling plant using cold air as a cooling medium and having its own compression cooling machine, such as an air chiller plant, is provided for each individual galley on the aircraft. It is also known to provide the cool air by using heat exchangers in direct thermal communication with the outer skin of the aircraft fuselage to take advantage of the cold temperatures of the environment at cruising altitudes of the aircraft.
Thus, in the known arrangements, the food service trolleys that are to be cooled are stowed in galley areas directly proximate to the cooling plants. Each respective cooling plant and the associated cooling medium conduits for each galley are rigidly and permanently installed in proximity to the respective galley. Such an arrangement entails a great redundant weight and a large space requirement, and produces additional undesirable heat and noise in the aircraft cabin. The prior art does not allow a flexible rearrangement of the galleys within the aircraft cabin and therewith a rapid reconfiguring of the cabin space for various applications of the aircraft due to the fixed and permanent arrangement and high space requirement of the multiple cooling plants.