Filthy Plane Videos Ignite Debate About Airline Cleanliness
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The alternatives would be transfers through different countries with a hugely increased cost.
I can fly to Detroit, no problem. To fly to Chicago, I first have to fly to Detroit.
People saying "I literally have a choice" don't understand that some people are not on 500k a year Silicon Valley salaries and we have to manage our finances and make compromises. I cannot afford to pay 500 EUR randomly to fly through a connection in another country instead of 50 EUR multiple times a year just to avoid a shitty airline.
The alternative would be to refuse to see my family because I want to make a point about a shitty airline.
If I were temp_account_32, I think I would have would be grateful for those airlines, rather than focusing on their shitty aspects.
And yes, I'm grateful that those connections even exist, it's just a shame that specifically those two are the ones servicing those routes. I suspect that there might not be enough demand for a better airline to step in.
The plane wasn't something I personally had a lot of faith in. It was pretty obvious that they spent as little money as possible to operate.
Don't think too hard about it, and enjoy the amusement :)
They are talking about RyanAir, which is an Irish carrier that flys all over Europe and offers scratch card gambling. Swissair also offered gambling via video screens for a period of time.
> Why are you outraged
:-D
I'm not outraged. I said I vaguely recall.
But I'll bait. There is a difference between passive advertising that blends into the background and multiple people walking up and down the isle literally waving scratch cards while another person is drawing attention to them with a loudspeaker. I'm not outraged because of how wrong that is. I recall it because there is a degree of vulgarity to it.
Just like there is a difference between knowing where to go to buy drugs, seeing a drug dealer on the corner, having that drug dealer casually say "drugs?" as you walk by, having the drug dealer put ads in your mailbox, and having them knock on your door and ask if you want to buy drugs.
If you complain about Ryanair's quality, you really aren't their target customer.
In my view, if you're paying 25 euros for a flight to Spain and then being outraged because the floor is a little bit dirty then you're a choosing beggar. Other airlines will sell you a quality flight on a similar route for 20x the cost.
But yeah, planes are a bit gross, and I bring wipes with me for the arm rests and touch screen. Of course the best thing we could all do is to simply clean up after ourselves, which should be easy for all the non-idiots out there. They don't come around to collect trash 4-5 times per flight for the fun of it. They're trying to make it easy for you, and they do.
These low cost carriers have determined that having a clean plane is not important to their revenue, and so they don't. Discussion about the crew being there "for my safety" and not to clean accomplishes nothing, it's just a kind of empty internet point that gets brought up
Another perspective is these low cost carriers have determined sufficient passengers in their target market are not willing or able to pay sufficiently higher prices to have that level of cleaning before each flight.
For those of us who have always known planes are filthy and not wiped down, we carry a sanitizing wet wipe.
Btw it's not just low cost carriers, the dirtiest planes I've found are the larger carriers.
Your health is your responsibility foremost. Later in life you'll find noone else is looking out for you more than you.
TLDR: sanitize key objects before touching or your hands after if you're that concerned. TV remotes in hotels, trays in planes, after touching gas pumps etc.
I didn't see the video of clouds from the seat but IMHO that's prob common...I remember as a kid hitting office chairs and seeing dusts puff up.
The article cited Ryan air a lot, but like Frontier Airlines, I imagine cheap tickets means bad customer service as their staff is paid just enough to do their jobs but not care...that's talking from personal experience of how rude and unknowledgable Frontier staff (not just one but all interactions on my one flight) was compared to other airlines.
The hygiene theater is doing it's job.
I would add jet fuel to the mix.
You don't need to be an aerodynamics engineer to understand this either: Take a deep breath inside a usual aircraft cabin and tell me if that air is fresh and clean. If you do, either you are fucking lying out your ass or you never tasted truly clean, fresh air in your life.
Life's short, I'm well past the point of caring about people's fee fees regarding something we'll all forget about tomorrow.
So I'll say my piece and bug out. Don't like it? Don't read it; don't care.
Unfortunately though, most of my friends will never meet eachother, to preserve world peace.
Is anything that comes in the form of an academic paper bullshit in your mind, or just the ones about plane air quality?
Practically speaking, anyone who has ever been inside an aircraft cabin can speak all day about that distinctive "aircraft smell": A cocktail of smells that reminds one of industrial petroleum products, aged metal and plastics, human sweat and other biological waste products, dust, and tired cloth, among many other unpleasant things.
Noone is ever going to convince me that air that smells like /that/ is "clean", regardless how many layers of HEPA it's been through.
And
>Noone is ever going to convince me that air that smells like /that/ is "clean"
Seem to be at odds with each other. But, for what it's worth, I agree that there is a distinctive "aircraft smell" whenever I've flown, and I'm not particularly keen on breathing it in either.
Thing is, I haven't seen anything from anyone to that effect other than the "air is cycled through HEPA" canned PR response which is hardly convincing.
If there are scientific papers which note the contents of aircraft cabin air and compares it to objective definitions of clean air, coming to the conclusion the aircraft cabin air is clean, I'm interested and maybe they can change my mind.
I would trust the science, but not an ad from an airliner (which the linked page is).
I don't hate United, they're actually my airline of choice and I've held their 1K status since 2018. Based out of SFO and a frequent flyer its really the best choice as they hold close to 50% of the flights out of SFO. Maintaining 1K is totally worth it as anytime I call in I get a representative within 30 seconds, and in case of irrops I'm basically guaranteed a seat on the next flight.
My to biggest complaints are cleanliness and the service on board. I'd say neither of these are BAD, but there are other, better airlines.
Cleanliness: If I had to estimate, I can note cleanliness issues on a third of my flights on United. The worst is looking in the seat pockets or looking at the air vents above the windows (don't look there on any airline its usually disgustingly full of dust).
Service: As for service on board, the flight attendants are a little more rough, less attentive than other airlines on the same route. A common route for me is SFO-NRT and ANA flight attendants are checking in every 5 minutes during dinner service, where as United FA often disappear. The ANA food is of quality I would pay for not even on a plane. On United, I often get offered "chicken or fish", no paper menu, no table cloth, even in business. I think some of this is United being slow to bring back a higher quality of service post-pandemic, whereas ANA never dropped their quality of service.
I used to fly regularly from OZ to the US and often had to take United as they used to often be the cheapest by quite a margin. They had the oldest and most uncomfortable cabins on those routes. The cabin crew is absolutely atrocious, everytime they come through the cabin shouting "elbows and knees" (why is that so common on US Airlines? Never heard it anywhere else) and still manage to bump into everything. I have had coffee spilled on me at least 4 times and not once did I get an apology (and no I didn't have my elbow out). If you ask for something you often get rudely told off.. The food is absolutely the worst I ever ate on a plane and it goes on.
Audiobooks are a must! In 10-11 hours you could easily finish a lengthy book or two. You can usually digitally rent audiobooks from your local library, check out their website!
If you have people to visit along the way, that makes it a no-brainer IMO.
Airports really aren’t that crowded at all (other than a couple of pinch points), and just wear a mask and mind your business on the flight and you’re done in a couple of hours. I’ve flown 4 times in the past 3 months and each flight was actually quite pleasant.
Amazingly in 2022 "journalism" constitutes copy-pasting comments from Facebook and TikTok posts. From the NYT no less. These are the people that think you should pay to read this paywalled rubbish. This phenomenon isn't unique to them either.
Edit: Apparently the content copy-pasted by the NYT is such trash that HN auto-dead'd my comment for merely quoting it.
Sometimes they're literally anonymous, unsourced one-line opinions. I've seen articles that were collections of these, passed as commentary on politics or the news!
A dozen people tweet that they're moving somewhere, and suddenly "X are moving in droves to Y".
A dozen people stop doing something, and suddenly it's "the death of X".
A dozen people do something dumb and suddenly it's "we need to stop X" or "we need to talk about X" like it's 30 percent of the population.
I amuse myself with the feels that they sometimes must pay extra to retain that image. Like, what if all those dozens of gates all cost the same, but only the farthest away gives you that feeling odd futility?
https://www.bookofjoe.com/2022/08/experts-experts-flight-att...
I once flew DEL-AUH next to a gentleman who was clearly very puzzled with nearly every component of his in-flight meal. Not sharing any languages, I helped him out best I could with sign language, but I still remember his expression of surprised delight when he poured one packet's contents straight into his mouth, expecting gutka (powdered smokeless tobacco) but getting powdered coffee creamer instead.
The Times author, and flight attendants, seem to miss the point. I paid for a seat. I likely paid a fuckton of money for it, and I expect it to be clean such that neither I nor my clothing and belongings get dirty or become contaminated with biohazardous fluids.
Not enough turnaround time to clean? The airline didn't schedule enough time for cleaning and inspection and that is not my problem.
No equipment or supplies on the plane? The airline didn't equip the plane (or the terminal) with supplies to handle a common event (spilled food, passenger body fluids) and that is not my problem.
Flight attendant thinks it's beneath them to keep the plane clean? The airline isn't properly disciplining its employees and that is not my problem.
Smells like it's time for an FAA regulations around all this stuff.
I know a little about SW. "Like everything else, it's outsourced." is an unnecessarily broad statement. That being said, the interior cleaners are outsourced[1]. Contract terms are city-specific and there is a minimum requirement for which planes are cleaned (eg always overnights) and when.
> I paid for a seat.
Which has fine print, which makes fewer guarantees than you're comfortable with...which isn't really a problem. Don't buy the ticket, don't suffer.
> I likely paid a fuckton of money for it
Probably not. A round trip from Southern California to Minnesota is usually less than an uber from Los Angeles to San Diego, depending on how far in advance and timing, etc etc. Guess what Ubers don't do either?
Southwest planes are often delayed due to cleaning needs, regardless of the binary framing of the policies. I guess the COVID scare has just elevated routine policies to a political level, while we enjoy a previously unimaginable level of freedom, choice, and low-cost travel.
[1] My brother is a senior ramp agent about to retire, who happens to be working a shift he couldnt give away tonite.