Flight Attendants’ Dark and Dirty Secrets of Flying

For those visiting home or taking off on other summertime adventures, invest in antibacterial gel or sanitizing wipes. Taking a high dose of Vitamin C or a tab of Airborne, the immunity-boosting supplement, may be standard procedure for most seasoned travelers, but it is not the circulating air you should be wary of: it’s everything else. While cabin air is filtered and often cleaner than hospital air, airplane surfaces are like open petri dishes.

Disease-causing bacteria linger on armrests, plastic tray tables, metal toilet buttons, window shades, cloth seat pockets, and leather seats for days, or even up to a week. According to a study presented at this year’s American Society for Microbiology meeting, for example, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) survives longest on the seat-back pocket (seven days), while E. coli lasts longest on armrests (four days).

BEWARE OF SMOOTH SURFACES

Smooth surfaces, such as the plastic tray tables and window shades, transfer bacteria more easily than porous ones such as the fabric on the seats’ backs, where fibers grip bacteria.

Due to budgets and quick turnaround times of planes, there are no real rules or requirements for disinfecting planes. Here are some little-known dirty secrets, as told by flight attendants online.

TRAY TABLES

These are a bacterial metropolis. “If you have ever spread your peanuts on your tray and eaten, or really just touched your tray at all, you have more than likely ingested baby poo. I saw more dirty diapers laid out on those trays than food. And those trays, yeah, [I] never saw them cleaned or sanitized once.”

SEAT BELTS

Simply put, they are “filthy.”

HEADPHONES

Despite the plastic packaging that in-flight headphones sometimes come in, they are not new. Flight attendants put them back into packaging or “they go to a warehouse where they are ‘cleaned’ and repackaged.”

BLANKETS AND PILLOWS

Call the Blue Fairy and keep wishing on that star. No one washes these. Blankets are refolded in preparation for the next flight. “The only fresh ones I ever saw were on an originating first flight in the morning in a provisioning city.”

WATER

Go for the can. “Do not EVER drink water on an aircraft that did not come from a bottle. Don’t even TOUCH IT. The reason is that the ports to purge the lavatory and to refill the aircraft with potable water are within feet from each other and sometimes serviced all at once by the same guy. Not always, but if you’re not on the ramp watching, you’ll never know.”

COFFEE AND TEA

“The drinking water that is used for making coffee, tea, etc., should NEVER be consumed. The holding tanks in these sometimes 60-year-old planes are never cleaned. They have accumulated so much greenish grime on the walls that in some places it can be inches thick. This one is known very well by all airline employees.”

TRAVELING WITH PETS

From an aircraft fueler: “One thing I cannot stress enough is how your pets are treated. While your airline will take the best possible actions, some things cannot be avoided, like the noise on the ramp. I cannot stand out there without ear protection, and imagine your pet sitting out there on the ramp, waiting to be loaded onto the plane, being exposed to the same amount of noise I am. Please, people, think twice before flying your pets.”