Early morning flights and mornings after an overnight flgiht are fueled by coffee, but making decent coffee on a plane is tough. They’re generally using aircraft tank water, and the tanks aren’t cleaned as often as you’d think. The cabin is also pressurized, but to 6,000 or 8,000 feet and coffee brews differently at altitude. Add in the coffee that your airline is using and it may not be very good.
Even United, which uses Illy coffee, is hobbled by water and brewing conditions. Most other airlines use coffee that’s worse. Delta uses Starbucks coffee, which isn’t great to begin with and it’s a brew meant to be inoffensive to the fewest people. American’s coffee would be undrinkable even under the best conditions on the ground.
Some foreign carriers do a decent job with coffee. If I’m going to order it, those that can make espresso usually offer a better option. American brought back espresso to premium cabins on widebodies, something they’d suspended during the pandemic. Of course whether they’ll make it for you depends on the crew.
Still, while coffee in the air faces too many challenges to be really enjoyable, it’s perhaps the most important tool in the toolkit for solving inflight problems – and it can keep a flight from becoming miserable.
Here, an enterprising United Airlines flight attendant uses coffee to handle the mess made this week by a passenger throwing up during boarding.
Vomiting while boarding?? No problem!! Do it right here on your fellow passengers! Pour some coffee on it and we’re practically on time!! #united #unitedairlines pic.twitter.com/kiHNQCjDUj
— Jess (@JCCali) October 10, 2023
When an overserved United Airlines passenger threw up in business class last month, a passenger was offered a package of coffee grounds to hold up to their face to mask the smell.
Hey @united – I paid nearly $3K for this "luxury" business class experience where I got to sit next to an over-served woman throwing up on her tray table for an 8 hour flight. She refused to use the vomit bag provided and I was told I couldn't change seats #unitedAIRLINES pic.twitter.com/17nxRRRJc8
— CuriousWombat (@CuriousWombat7) September 25, 2023
I’ve also seen American Airlines crew use coffee grounds to mask a horrible smell in a lavatory. This is a bigger deal than you might think. British Airways once actually had to turn a Dubai flight back to London because a lavatory smelled so bad.
Here’s a hint for cabin crew: it works better when you open the package and really let the coffee grounds do their work, which I saw in the lavatory on another American Airlines flight:
But what do you use to hold those coffee grounds? Cabin crew on this Dallas to Seattle flight used a nut ramekin and that leads to two concerns: (1) the grounds might have spilled in turbulence? and (2) sure the ramekin will be washed, but do you really want to eat out of a ramekin that’s been in an American Airlines lavatory, after a nausea-inducing event no less? You can’t even sell a book that’s been in the bathroom, right?
The most common I’ve seen is the coffee bag in the lav. It works well. I think everyone would prefer the smell of coffee over what it is masking.
I flew for forty years as a purser and retired in 2006, the coffee bag in the lav was already in use when I started flying.
I wish I could say that the odor suppressers that they use these days were more effective, bud sadly no.
Maybe POOPF
Coffee grounds are great for many things. Even plants.
I’m always mystified why flight attendants are not allowed to use common household products to ameliorate an issue such as vomit.
Are they not allowed to use water?
Trying to clean vomit with paper towels and Clorox wipes on carpeting? Come on.
They should carry a can of SpotShot, some white cotton towels and use some common sense, for gosh sakes.
Hmmm, bring an empty thermos through security and then have one of the restaurants or coffee kiosks fill it with hot WATER. Then you can fill it with your choice of freeze dried or instant coffee. Better quality water and more than one cuppa 🙂 MY preference is a Smart Coffee and their Latte in individual packets. Works every time.and I have a good quality coffee on my flights. As for the smell, it is the peril of flying as is the canned and “recycled” air we breath. One must weigh the convenience of air travel with the perils 🙂 Bon Voyage!
Honestly it should be airlines paying for everyone in americas health care, given how absolutely disgusting planes are, how rarely they’re actually cleaned and how crammed in everyone is.
Many airlines carry a special absorbent powder for cleaning up vomit. Pour it on, leave it for a bit then scrape up using the plastic scraper that’s included in the packet, put it in a biohazard bag and done!
So the few years of liberal handouts of masks and wipes has ended. I am back to bringing my own canister of Clorox wips in my carryon. Will TSA easily permit a bag of coffee grounds?
Why are domestic airlines so cheap that they can’t properly supply and maintain clean passenger spaces? Passengers must rely on FA’s own housekeeping tricks and cheats. Reading this story took me back in time to being an economical housekeeper and reading a newsprint column of Helpful HInts from Heloise-Good Housekeeping.
Ok, I bravely saw the video, now. Disgusting. Initial thoughts: 1. Black attire had a slimming effect for your look! (no.) 2. Shorts should be banned. My last flight, my adjacent cattle-class passenger was wearing the trendy backwards baseball cap, dirty t-shirt, baggy shorts, and untied trainers, and his chubby body overflowed our shared armrest, and as he snoozed, his manspreading right leg laid into my left leg. (Weird, but not uncommon, and I’m not totally anti-social.) 3. Smelly feet in dirty trainers invading the common aisle space 4. Business class passengers generally are worse dressed and worse behaved than cattle class passengers.
So disgusting. I’ve a family member who gets sick on half her flights; she has no problem actually using the airsick bag. So easy, and in every seat. Just use the airsick bag, close it, and ring the FA button.
Oh man, that video!!! This right here…this is why I always use a Wet Wipe on the tray table (and armrests, etc.) before takeoff!! You never know what was there before you, and we all wish it couldn’t possibly be something this gross.
I make my own coffee on the plane using an aeropress go and bottled water. You don’t need to heat the water. Just stir it for two mins and press and it makes a delicious cold brew. There is no way I’d drink airplane coffee.
Delta was using freeze dried coffee in the early 1980’s on their aircraft for passengers drinks. Cabin service crews used it to absorb vomit on the carpet. Not only did it obsorb the liquid, it masked the scent allowing the crews to prep the aircraft. Coffee packs were often put in the last row seat pockets to cover the smell of leaking lavatories and smelly cargo odor from stinking up the aircraft. So your discovery of the use of coffee grounds in the aircraft is quite dated. By the way, I love the Delta Starbucks coffee. Stick to the facts in your articles and leave your opinions out.
Using coffee grounds to mask human smells is an old nursing trick. We used to leave a filter with industrial grounds (I think it was Dowe Egberts commercial -supplied that the hospital bought) under the bed of patients with fecal incontinence to help with the smell – the hospital beds could raise their height with a touch button (so we didn’t kill our backs leaning over) so you could raise the bed height and put the coffee grounds on the bottom part of the bed and when the bed was re-lowered there was still a several-feet gap for the grounds’ smell to permeate enough to make a difference.