American Airlines used to describe their new ‘Oasis’ domestic aircraft interior as offering a ‘living room experience’ because these planes (and others, that hadn’t yet been converted) are equipped with high speed satellite internet. That means you can stream content to your own device.
Of course my living room is right next to my kitchen. American’s new domestic planes have no ovens in coach. My couch is much better padded than the slimline seats the airline has been using. And guests don’t each separately watch the big game on their phones – my living room has a television.
Still passengers sometimes take the living room metaphor a little too literally, as with a group of passengers flying United Airlines from Cancun to Chicago on Sunday. A passenger reports that one passenger was “super hung over and the [flight attendant working first class] had to shake him 5-6 times to wake him to tell him to put his mask on.”
That man, along with his travel companions, enjoyed themselves like poorly-raised teenage boys at home, who figure a parent would just clean up after them.
Credit: Mary Burd
Airlines have cleaners, but they don’t always have time to scour an aircraft thoroughly between flights. On Southwest Airlines flight attendants pick up after passengers between trips. Cabin crew regularly walk around with a trash bag on flights to collect passenger refuse. But it’s incumbent on passengers not to disrespect a piece of machinery that might cost $50 million or more (a plane).
No doubt after a long haul flight on a U.S. airline the coach cabin will look like it’s been through… as much as the passengers have. (On an Asian airline things may look a bit better because of proactive tidying during the flight.)
When passengers see a messy cabin, they tend to leave it that way themselves and perhaps even in worse condition (Cf. lavatories). It’s the ‘broken windows theory’ of policing applied to an aircraft cabin. Slovenliness begets slovenliness. But the reverse is also true. Hold up your end, keep things looking respectable, and your fellow passengers are more likely to do so as well – and an airline’s employees and contractors will have a much easier time maintaining the plane for the people flying in your seat next, too.
Reminds me of my bus driver days at QCUSD…
Yes, we should clean up after ourselves. I always do, and I would look askance at anyone in my social circles who makes a mess like the one pictured.
However, I’ll never judge someone I don’t know for making that kind of mess.
Why?
Because my very first sentence — “we should clean up after ourselves” — is my own belief. It is not a fact, nor is it law, nor is it even in the contract of carriage. Cultural norms, not facts, dictate the extent to which we ought to clean up after ourselves. The absolute fact is that people (staff) exist to clean up after us. If somebody makes a mess like the one pictured in this story, somebody paid will clean it up (notice I did not say they are paid to clean it up, nor that they are paid enough or not enough — I simply said there will be somebody who is on the clock while performing the labor of cleaning). This aircraft will fly and life will go on.
So I don’t want to judge a stranger who doesn’t share my own cultural norm.
If we all operated with more tolerance, the world would be better off.
Maybe it’s just me, but I always police my trash during a flight and neatly stow my linens and such on my seat as I disembark. It’s not hard and the civilized thing to do.
Think that’s bad? Try an El Al transatlantic flight.
@Carl — While I commend you for making the cleaner’s job easier, I urge you to delete phrases like “the civilized thing to do” from your lexicon — these often enshrine white Anglo supremacy, among other injustices that have no place in (ironically) a civil society! Don’t feel bad — a lot of commonplace language is inadvertently offensive, e.g. “whitelist” and “blacklist” — we now use “allowlist” and “blocklist” which, aside from having no racial overtones, is more precise!
@Ari K — You’re correct that other countries’ domestic flights have very different outcomes and that affirms my first comment about cultural diversity. If we, Americans, value cultural diversity as much as we claim to, then we cannot judge this point-blank as “bad.”
By the way, let me add —
I don’t have a problem with airlines actually telling customers to please clean up after themselves. In fact, many airlines already do in the lavatory. Ever seen the signage to wipe up the wash basin for the benefit of the next passenger?
What I do have a problem is with airlines not saying that, yet expecting it. Unwritten rules like this expose cultural differences and cause tensions in a diverse society.
Let’s all aim to communicate clearly what it is we are looking for.
Jason, you’re a bigger piece of trash than the picture shows. People like you deliberately looking for racism everywhere? YOU are the problem.
I am always grateful these messy passenger litterbugs did not vomit in the aisle, on other passenger seats or, on other passengers while flying on American Airlines. Perhaps American Airlines could consider charging an incidental aircraft cleaning fee for inconsiderate trashy passengers just like Uber does when you puke in their vehicle.
Don’t forget, as an American Express Platinum Card® benefit, sloppy frequent flyers may use up to $200 in statement credits per calendar year for incidental airline fees like a cabin cleaning special assessment.
We don’t have enough context here to pass judgment, so I don’t know whether to be outraged or compassionate. I’d hate to overstep my privilege and judge people who might’ve been historically oppressed. The real problem here could be systemic, after all.
If you clean the plane, the airplane cleaners all get fired for being redundant. So its actually not a good idea to clean the plane because your are preserving jobs.
Besides, some people are just pigs and we all support a diverse society, right?
Jason says:
“@Carl — While I commend you for making the cleaner’s job easier, I urge you to delete phrases like “the civilized thing to do” from your lexicon — these often enshrine white Anglo supremacy, among other injustices that have no place in (ironically) a civil society!
Jason says:
@Ari K — You’re correct that other countries’ domestic flights have very different outcomes and that affirms my first comment about cultural diversity. If we, Americans, value cultural diversity as much as we claim to, then we cannot judge this point-blank as “bad.”
@Jason, I got a suggestion for you:
Show that photo to your Japanese friends and if they react negatively, chastise them for their “white Anglo supremacy”.
But wait, there’s more:
After a news article was published about a kid who pooped on his airline seat, Radio Free Asia interviewed a Taiwanese flight attendant who said there’s no law prohibiting a child (not sure about adults) from pooping on his seat. Read more: https://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2014/07/28/child-poops-on-airplane-seat/
@SeanNY2 — the only Japanese friends I have are white American expats. Irrespective of that, you may want to look up phrases like “uncle Tom” or “uncle Chan.” One need not be literally white Anglo to uphold its supremacy. One reason white Anglo supremacy is so resilient is that several non-white groups have adopted its tenets in hopes of climbing the social ladder in a white-dominant world.
@SeanNY2 — the only Japanese friends I have are white American expats. Irrespective of that, you may want to look up phrases like “uncle Tom” or “uncle Chan.” One need not be literally white Anglo to uphold its supremacy. One reason white Anglo supremacy is so resilient is that several non-white groups have adopted its tenets in hopes of climbing the social ladder in a white-dominant world.
@Jason, the idea that Japanese respect for orderliness and treating cleaning up after yourself as a form of respect for others comes from the fact that “Anglos” made them do it, akin to “Uncle Chans” is (how shall I put this?) the most extreme example of cultural narcissism and ignorance I’ve ever heard of in my life? Maybe the second most extreme?
A few quotes on the concept of cleanliness in Shinto:
“A key concept in Shinto is kegare (impurity or dirt), the opposite of purity. Examples of kegare range from death and disease to virtually anything unpleasant. Frequent purification rituals are necessary to ward off kegare.
“If an individual is afflicted by kegare, it can bring harm to society as a whole,” explained Noriaki Ikeda, assistant Shinto priest at Hiroshima’s Kanda Shrine. “So it is vital to practice cleanliness. This purifies you and helps avoid bringing calamities to society. That is why Japan is a very clean country.”
“This concern for others is understandable in the case of, say, infectious diseases. But it also works on more prosaic levels, like picking up your own rubbish. We Japanese believe we shouldn’t bother others by being lazy and neglecting the trash we’ve made.”
And in case you’ve never heard of Shinto, it dates to about 300 BC. And in case you don’t know it, that pre-dates Anglo anything by about 800 years.
In fact Will Adams, the first ever Anglo anybody to set eyes on Mt. Fuji (approximately 1900 years after the birth of Shinto) remarked that:
“the nobility were scrupulously clean’, enjoying ‘pristine sewers and latrines’ and steam baths of scented wood at a time when the streets of England ‘often overflowed with excrement’. The Japanese ‘were appalled’ by the Europeans’ disregard for personal cleanliness.”
@Jason Take your social justice CRT crap elsewhere. You are a racist…..
I always took a small trash bag for my stuff, the hardest part was stopping the FAs taking it from the coat hook during flight. Not being a pig isn’t really hard.
Not being a pig, is , apparently, lost on @Jason.
Gary, what do you make of theses comments? I’m genuinely intrigued?
@SeanNY2 — your argument conflates personal/household vs. professional/commercial settings. A house guest is under different expectations than a (paying) airline passenger. By the way I’ve flown non-revenue (as an employee) and in those cases, written into the agreement, was a far more meticulous requirement to clean up after myself than paying customers. I disagree with your characterization of my “narcissism” or “ignorance” to other cultures, but I will leave it at that, and focus on the topic of this blog post.
@Woofie — if you find no value in cultural diversity and tolerance, that is your prerogative. It is confusing how you signal how good of a person you are in the first paragraph, yet also signal how insulting of a person you can be in the second paragraph.
@Paulz — I haven’t used a CRT monitor in years. OLED all the way baby! As to your second point, I won’t respond to unsubstantiated allegations of racism.
@Gavin — Not to speak for Gary, but I’ll chime in with my perspective. There are obviously a number of divergent viewpoints represented in these comments. Gary, in my view, is a libertarian and would support the back-and-forth of discussion even if he disagrees with the views represented. This is itself a model of tolerance that we need more of in our free society.
While an airplane is technically a private form of carriage and yes there are people paid to ensure the cabin is cleaned, I consider this subject to the same respect as any shared public area.
To call this behavior out then retort that this causes “tension” based on some manufactured cultural sensitivity is pure drivel. It’s not the airlines expecting it, rather the fellow passengers that are and will share the same space in a public setting. And no, that does not need a sign nor is it indicitave of any sort of supremacy.
Must we be sensitive to those that leave their mess in the terminal waiting area? A park bench? Beach? Restaurant? I’m sorry, it is the “civilized” thing to do in the sense that you acknowledge other human beings exist in that same area besides yourself, and take respect property that is not yours.
Jason,
Please enlighten me as too what cultures and races I should give a pass to for leaving a filthy seating area behind. I sincerely want to know so I can broaden my understanding and not have any unauthorized thoughts.
@Various people — I just scrolled up and saw some comments that I missed earlier. I won’t dignify the personal attacks, but I will say:
1. I am aware of the broken window fallacy as Gary mentioned in the article. I don’t support leaving trash just to preserve jobs.
2. I support diversity and tolerance, but not everyone does, and I respect that. (I disagree with the Popperian notion of “we must be intolerant of intolerance”.)
3. I would urge everyone to be transparent about their beliefs. If you are intolerant of cultures that would support (or at the very least, not condemn) the actions manifested in the photo that is the subject of this article — just own it. I’m reminded of how many people claim to support freedom of speech, but turns out they just support freedom of the speech they agree with. That is not meaningful. It is very easy to be tolerant of another culture when it’s the same as yours. That is not meaningful, either.
@jcil — All cultures and all races. Simply do not judge. Leave judgment to God. This is a Judeo-Christian principle that America has failed to uphold, I would argue to the detriment of the country.
@jcil — By the way, no such thing as an unauthorized thought. Only unauthorized actions.
Jason, you might consider taking your own advice. You are a very judgemental person yourself.
@jcil — Sure. If I have made the mistake of judging someone, please point that out to me, so I will cease the behavior. Like any human being, I can be subject to blind spots and hypocrisy.
@Jason – Illegitimi Non Carborundum. You’re trying to be kind and understanding. The fact that people are attacking that says a lot more about them than you.
While an airplane is technically a private form of carriage and yes there are people paid to ensure the cabin is cleaned, I consider this subject to the same respect as any shared public area.
To call this behavior out then retort that this causes “tension” based on some manufactured cultural sensitivity is pure drivel. It’s not the airlines expecting it, rather the fellow passengers that are and will share the same space in a public setting. And no, that does not need a sign nor is it indicitave of any sort of supremacy.
Must we be sensitive to those that leave their mess in the terminal waiting area? A park bench? Beach? Restaurant? I’m sorry, it is the “civilized” thing to do in the sense that you acknowledge other human beings exist in that same area besides yourself, and respect property that is not yours.
Jason. You’re a POS. Go away.
Jason,
Now I understand why everyone’s comments are directed at you. I didn’t ask for your input. I asked for Gary’s, owner of this website/blog. You want people to respond, start your own blog. So please MYOFB.
@Jason, you insinuated that Japanese notions of cleanliness were adopted by Japanese “in hopes of climbing the social ladder in a white-dominant world”
Here’s your full quote:
“One need not be literally white Anglo to uphold its supremacy. One reason white Anglo supremacy is so resilient is that several non-white groups have adopted its tenets in hopes of climbing the social ladder in a white-dominant world.”
– Jason
You would have done well to take your own advice and “focus on the topic of this blog” before such a vivid display of white cultural narcissism and belittlement of other races, rather than after someone called you out for it.
Jason needs his own blog
Diversity and tolerance does not include being a slob or thinking that you can leave a mess and “the little people will clean up after me”. Not making a mess is just common courtesy.