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.
Let’s be real… they are disgusting.
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.
There is no culture around the world that is so universally hated like an Indian
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.