Most flights I've been on are serving water in cups from bottled water the attendants are opening as they go.
I assume that this is a just alarmist journalism, since water for tea/coffee is heated to boiling, and all the taps in the bathrooms say some version of 'non-potable'.
Boiling at elevation is different to boiling at sea level.
To kill Cryptosporidium (etc) you need a rolling boil for 1 minute (no one does this) ... and that's at sea level. At > 2km up you need to run that for > 3 minutes (and absolutely no one does that).
And all this is before I even get started on the woefully uncivilised idea of using 100C water for green tea.
When I mentioned the >2km 'elevation' I meant in an airplane, which typically cruises around 10km ... but are pressurised, as you note. Unfortunately they're pressured to be around 2.4km (effective). Some newer planes will pressurise to around 1.8km but these are uncommon.
In any case, water boils at '2.4km effective' at around 92C ... and therein lies the problem.
Note that sterilization requires higher temperatures for longer periods, but it's not required for food products consumed by the general public. Some bacteria may survive the boiling process, but your stomach acid + immune system will destroy them.
[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/wells/dise...
I'm just curious since I know that controlling the level of E. coli contamination in milk is important from first-hand work on dairy farms, plus I know that pasteurization heats (not boils) the milk, and not for the ridiculous durations I see when searching online for "making water safe to drink".
Cruising altitude on a plane is roughly equivalent to air pressure at 1800-2400m, so using [1] that means water boils at around 93°C.
(If I had any familiarity with Fahrenheit, I wouldn't have bothered looking this up. 160°F = 70°C, and even on Everest water boils at a higher temperature.)
[1] http://docs.engineeringtoolbox.com/documents/1344/boiling_po...
Occasionally I find out that something that I thought / hoped / believed to be the case ... wasn't.
Killing 'nearly all germs' is good, but not really what you need when you may get sick or die from the kinds of germs that don't fit the 'nearly all' category.
Cryptosporidium and giardia (two things that Sydney residents became overly familiar with before our Olympic hosting) require a few minutes of rolling boil to kill. And the definition of 'rolling boil' becomes more onerous as you increase your altitude.
CDC says a full minute of boiling (3 minutes for elevations greater than 6,500ft) to deal with (the problem strain of) E. coli in well water. Momentary boiling is not sufficient for safety.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/wells/dise...
However, you don't need sterile food; you just need to ensure that there are sufficiently few bacteria that your body can deal with the rest. I would suspect boiling water (to make the coffee) and holding it hot (for serving) helps quite a bit with this, but I was wondering if anyone had some actual numbers.
Sterilizing river water calls for one minute at a rolling boil, which you won't get from a kettle. But something like beef, with a much more restricted threat, can be done down around 160F, and bringing your kettle to a boil should easily get you a few minutes above that line.
Not all tea brewings will, but I'm guessing "boil it and throw in tea" is more common on airplanes than a delicate, 165F green tea production.
So... it'd be nice to hear from a microbiologist about the specifics on this one. Regulators seem concerned, but that's about drinking it as tap water, which I wouldn't do.
I've only ever seen bottled water for cold drinks as well, but I seriously doubt they're boiling bottles of Desani up front.