Delta Passenger Changed Diaper On Tray Table — Flight Attendant Orders Him to the Lavatory, But He Keeps Going

A Delta Air Lines passenger in seat 21C had an infant traveling with him. Mid-flight they needed a diaper change. Instead of getting up to go to the lavatory, the man dropped the tray table, tossed a thin blanket over it, and changed the baby’s right there in the aisle seat.

A flight attendant was doing service, with the cart just two rows away. When she arrived and saw this mess she offered, “Sir, there’s a changing table in the lavatory.” The dad didn’t even look up, and responded “Yeah, almost done, it’s easier here.”

When he finished, he stuffed the dirty diaper into the seat pocket for a few minutes, then later took it with him to the lavatory. He gave the tray table a bare-handed “wipe” without using any sanitizer, and then folded it back up.

His row was left with the snacks flight attendant provided, and the stench of freshly changed diaper wafting by. The passenger in the row relaying what happened realizes: “Someone is 100% eating off that thing next flight.”

Social media was aghast, using words like disgusting, inconsiderate, affront to humanity, straight to jail, banned from the airline. This is one of the rare ‘children on a plane’ stories where both non-parents and parents agree: the dad’s behavior crossed a clear line.

• Parents (including those who say flying with infants or toddlers “sucks”) say they’ve never been tempted to do this and would always use the lav. One parent offered that if their spouse did this, it would be “divorce-worthy.”

• This underscores why many passengers bring their own Clorox wipes. They’ll wipe down tray tables and be horrified by what’s left behind. Some people even carry nitrile gloves along with the disinfecting wipes.

  Just boarded @united 1424 to ORD, plane certaily wasn't cleaned (that is the wipe used on the tray table and arm rest, trash in all seat backs and on seat) pic.twitter.com/BHxBKjs9u8

  — Joe DeFazio (@SmilePolitely8) March 19, 2023

  Just boarded @JetBlue flt B6 2513 from atl to lga. Something said, wipe your seat down. This is disgusting. Covid on the rise again and this seat, tray table and arm rests were filthy dirty. When I tried to give the flight attendent the dirty wipes, pic.twitter.com/QLstYbuHoU

  — lisa d. gray (@randomlisasf) October 30, 2023

One flyer argues Delta really stands for “Diaper Emergency Lower Tray-table Always.” A flight attendant chimed in,

This happens a lot. Then the parents try to hand us the diapers to throw away 🙂 I tell them there’s a changing table in the lav and trash bins in there for a reason.

Remember that there’s no requirement for tray tables to be cleaned. Airlines set their own schedules. Before the pandemic it was often every 30-60 days on major U.S. airlines. Between deep cleans, tray tables might not get regular wipes at all.

During Covid, major U.S. airlines claimed cleaning before every flight, often with electrostatic spraying and explicit mention of tray tables as a high-touch surface. However as the pandemic wore on this cleaning was scaled back. American, for instance, stopped wiping tray tables between flights in 2021. Cleaners only get a few minutes on the aircraft between flights. The major focus is picking up trash and even that can be hit or miss. Yet tray tables are one of the dirtiest surfaces on the plane!

Maybe your tray table got wiped overnight, maybe it was the plane’s last deep clean and that could be more than a month ago. Don’t use that surface for anything you’re going to touch directly! Using a tray table as a changing station just underscores what probably happened at your seat during the previous flight, or the flight before that.

Traveling with kids is hard! I have a one year old. He’s more challenging than my seven year old was at his age. But tray tables are a food surface, other people are inches away, and there is a dedicated space you’re supposed to use. Some of you are just going to call me a germaphobe, but you don’t get to aerosolize fecal matter into a packed metal tube.

As a parent, it’s important to bring travel changing pads, plenty of wipes, diapers, diaper bags (doggie bags work great), and backup outfits. Make sure you know which lavs have a fold-down changing table, and if there’s one that’s larger than the others.

Obviously just change babies in the lavatory but that has problems, too, because flights wind up diverting after passengers try to flush the diapers down the toilet. One diaper left in the lav was so bad the airline thought it was a bomb and diverted.