Ulosevich said Monday that Gate Gourmet provides food to other airlines but that it had not received any other reports of tampering.

"We are absolutely cooperating fully with federal and local authorities who are involved, and concurrent with that, we'll be conducting our own full-scale investigation."

Frequent flier Gary Leff, who rakes in more than 100,000 miles each year, said he's taking a "wait and see attitude" but isn't planning to change the way he thinks about airline food.

"I mean, this isn't going to be the first thing ever found in airline food and certainly not the first thing found in restaurant food," he said.

Leff is a frequent domestic flier for work and redeems his miles for international vacations, sharing his cheap travel expertise on his blog, View from the Wing.

He expects others to be bothered by this incident "for about 15 minutes," Leff said. He referenced a number of occasions when unwanted ingredients or objects have been discovered in foods and medicines over the past few decades, incidents no one seems to worry about or even remember, he said.

"I think most people are just so happy to be served food in the sky that they'll forget it pretty quickly," he said.

Tom Fuentes, a former FBI assistant director, said he believes the incidents are "along the lines of a serious prank," rather than a terrorist act.

The discovery of needles does raise questions about oversight of off-site food preparation, where numerous people have access to food before containers are locked, he said.

Among those questions, Fuentes said, are, "Who is watching the people who are preparing the food? What kind of background checks are they going through? What kind of security exists at those locations?"