Instagram video shows a Saudia cabin at the end of a flight littered with leftover food wrappers, tissues, and all sorts of other refuse. Flight attendants are stuck bending over and cleaning up the passenger mess.
This is framed as a failure of passenger responsibility (largely true, though there’s some airline fault here) and Indian travelers are scolded (“call to Indians: travel responsibly”) by the poster and by many commenters, but there’s more going on here than that.
Here’s what the commenters get wrong. Over and over I see things like “Such a Shame! #Indian”, “Always Indians”, “It shows the upbringing of the passengers”, “Indian Culture ” and so on. Some mention hypocrisy, ego, or lack of shame (in the original language: “Na sharam aati hai na samajh…”).
Although I do think the airline should be providing trash bags more, probably offering fewer packaged snacks (generating less waste) and service standards should entail more frequent trash collection passes.
Here’s where the real drivers come into play on these sorts of flights:
- Heavy use of single-serve, high-packaging snacks generate lots of loose waste.
- Limited, overfilled trash carts and small lavatory trash bins on high-load sectors.
- India–Gulf (especially Jeddah and Medina during Umrah) and India–U.K. runs are often 100% full with high seating density.
- Longer flights with multiple services generate more trash but the amount of crew time for trash collection is relatively limited on India – Gulf versus true long haul.
- Pilgrimage, labor and visiting friends and relative traffic entails shared food, bring-your-own meals, and kids which means relatively high production of waste.
- First-time and infrequent flyers will have less tendency to hold onto trash until cabin crew comes to collect it (unfamiliar with norms).
- Slimline seats with tiny pockets or no pockets, no cup-holders, turbulence mean spills, dropped cups, napkins on the floor.
- Once a section visibly dirties, social proof accelerates littering (“it’s already messy” “this is what everyone does”).
“Culture” here is situational norming, not nationality. You’ll see the same thing happen on Jet2 and TUI fly. India flights involve high loads and price-sensitive passengers (India’s per capita GDP is under $3,000) lean toward snack-heavy, packaging-heavy, service with fewer onboard amenities and lots of trash. But that profile is not unique to the India market.
The “Indians are messy” trope is way too overbroad – the population of India is pushing 1.5 billion, they’re not homogeneous!
Here’s how you combat messes like this:
- Moving snacks earlier inflight would guarantee time for a final trash sweet before securing the cabin.
- More trash capacity.
- Adhesive seatback pouches for trash
- Announcement prior to descent in multiple languages “Trash pass in 5 minutes.” Plus, crew scripting: “If it’s on the floor we can’t vacuum it until arrival; pass it to us now.”
- Add 5–10 minutes of turn time at known-messy stations, holding vendors to cleanliness service-level agreements.
Ultimately mess is a function of: load factor, stage length, service events and packaging, final 30 minutes of service, family and group passenger mix, and seat pocket design. You don’t need culture in the regression to get a high R².
You can’t change a culture though no matter how hard you try. You haven’t truly lived until you’ve seen a 7-8 year old girl lift up her dress and poop right on the sidewalk outside the KFC in Bangalore, India.
You can call this whatever you want but it’s their norm. It will change over time but it’s just how it is.
It’s funny that Gary uses terms like R-squared to attempt to signal his education level (a la Spence, 1973). Every reader of this blog who has even a masters-level education in any quantitative science rolled their eyes at that comment, which ironically does signal Gary’s level of education, just at a very low and out of date level. What an embarrassment, Gary.
As to bigotry of any sort, remember it is the MISBEHAVIOR that is at issue, not the background of the perpetrators.
I have not traveled on Saudia but I have traveled many times on Qatar, Emirates and Etihad on the Gulf to India sector.
I don’t recall seeing this specific trash issue much. There may be a stray piece of trash or two but nothing like this big pile. So I’m going to go with Gary’s list of reasons. Also that gives an opportunity for Saudia to adjust the processes to improve things a bit.
Some of the cultural phenomenons are inexplicable though. For example I notice that when the flight lands at the airport people immediate gets up and start moving around even though the crew is pleading them to stay seated. I only see it on the inbound flights to India. On the outbound ones I don’t see it happen to that extend. Must be eager to get home.
Oh you never seen a Cape Verdean flight
Whenever Gary has a ‘Clean. Your. Planes.’ post, usually about American Airlines, commenters don’t often rush to blame an entire nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, etc. Is this just a honeypot for identifying bigots?
I feel like air travel to/from developing countries in general is a difficult crowd. Because people from those countries do not have much experience in air travel so it is hard for the passengers and the crew alike. My friend who worked for Spirit often told me that the Honduras and Guatemala flights out of IAH were usually the toughest crowd, due to language barrier, less experienced travellers, and lack of expectations (ie expecting a free carry on or free water inflight)
There is no excuse for throwing your trash on the floor. Never. It’s poor behavior. How about putting trash in the seat pocket? Or calling a flight attendant? To say that the airline is at fault is blaming the victim.
“It’s funny that Gary uses terms like R-squared to attempt to signal his education level (a la Spence, 1973).” What is even funnier is posts by people with sub-par education.
I remember being on a US airways metrojet flight and family from Ohio was in front of us. Dear old dad who was like 4.5 Ft tall read his newspaper and then threw it all over the floor.
Ever been to a restaurant and seen a tornado hit it , turns out it just a kid with bad parents
Yep, they’re victims Gary. Smh
@This comes to mind — Ahh, the ole ‘anyone who disagrees with me is uneducated’ line. Classic. Yup, you da smartie; we dumdums.
“You can’t change a culture though no matter how hard you try. ”
It can for sure.
Look up trash in US before EPA.
It was pretty nasty … lack of private, clean indoor toilets is the reason for the nastiness you see about public pooping. It’s not a hereditary built into DNA.
and it’s not built into DNA, for sure it can be changed.
In hotels in Asia, I have seen Indian guests at the restaurant spitting food out on the floor under the table and tasting food on the buffet with a spoon and putting it back in the dishes
I don’t know why big corporations like Microsoft, Google, Pepsi (no longer), Starbucks (no longer), and others had to have Indian CEOs. What can they do besides talking long and boring? Every companies, once an Indian person is hired to be the head, trust me, the whole team will be Indians.
@Abhi — Good point. And of all the US Presidents… it was Nixon who created the EPA. (Something, something, broken clock…)
Wait a minute! The trash I see looks like something when a trash bag ripped and all the contents are on the floor… it is not spread out all over the house plane if the passengers were just littering. The bag must have bust or a bin toppled must be the case.
While I do not disagree on the littering civic sense of Indians or certain countries around, this particular video doesn’t seem that the passengers threw stuff all over. How come all the trash is in one place piled up… I don’t think the passengers come to the spot and littered
Apparently anyone surprised by this have never actually seen that sh1tty 4th world country that is India.
As a company, you can’t change their behavior, you can only ban them from flying your airline.
I want to comment on Mike’s comment above. I was sitting in a nice Cafe in Scottsdale, Arizona enjoying my morning coffee with a friend over discussion about economics. The cafe is about 100′ from the shore of a man made lake with a built in walkway. Within minutes I see an elegant woman, dressed in her finery come walking on the walkway with a large dog. The dog had an urge to defecate which she allowed on the walkway and to her credit she picked it up with a poop bag she had brought from home. After that, she continued walking with the bag dangling from her hand. Also, in my neighborhood, I see dog poop all the time on the sidewalks. One has to dodge this to continue walking without stepping in it. Defecating in public for one’s pet dog is quite acceptable in the U.S. culture. In a poor country such as India, the government is giving a big push for numerous public toilets for use by homeless people and people struck by poverty. I have seen photos of California homeless defecating in the parks and on the sidewalks as well as the beaches. And this U.S.A of ours is the wealthiest country on earth? Judging is a subjective game. If you don’t like being where you are, you should not be there.
Is anyone who has walked, not been chauffeured, around most major Indian cities shocked? To be fair though our “homeless camps” are trying to emulate entire cities in India.
@ Karl John May. You said it perfectly.
I have only flown one airline in the region and it seemed okay. But it was a puddle jumper from Rangoon to Mandalay. That said, Myanmar 2016, my first impression was absolute lack of sanitation infrastructure. Piles , hills, of trash in the streets. Even while on a hike up in the mountains we came across a landfill, minus the fill.