Around Thanksgiving a Delta Air Lines passenger flying economy from Paris to Boston placed their used meal tray on the ground in the aisle, so they could make tray table space to get work done. At least three people stepped in the partially-eaten trash on the way to the lavatory. It was selfish and outrageous.
Food tray left in aisle to continue work
byu/srbinafg indelta
Around the same time something similar happened on an American Airlines flight, but only after flight attendants refused a passenger’s request to take their trash.
Flying American Airlines from Miami to Chicago, cabin crew refused to take a box from food the passenger brought on board themselves, and according to the passenger, they responded “We don’t throw away your personal garbage.” So the passenger placed the box in the aisle and he says they still wouldn’t throw it away – they just kept kicking it out of the way each time they walked up or down the aisle.
[A]s a paying passenger i brought a pizza onboard from the terminal in MIA. I finished the pizza and tried to give the empty box to a very femine acting male flight attendant as he walked by before departure . He said “We dont throw away your personal garbage.” I was a bit shocked at this new policy he had enacted. So I set the box down in the aisle. (yes, I know, a bit childish). On the 2.3 hour flight from MIA to ORD not only did none of the flight attendants pick up the empty pizza box…..they continued to kick it out of the way as they walked by it.
This was reported in a pilot forum, but the poster emphasizes that they were paying on this trip and weren’t nonrevving although I can’t say it should matter. (Nonrevs generally avoid complaining, but are also usually treated better by crew.)
I can’t say that this is an American Airlines pilot, despite posting in the American Airlines forum at Airline Pilot Central. Identities aren’t validated there like in an authenticated American Airlines employee forum such as ‘The Line’ (or ‘The Bastard Line’). Even if this were just a passenger the story would be shocking (maybe even more so).
Occasionally passengers will decide they want their tray table space, and won’t want to wait for flight attendants to come by collecting meals. And so they just use the available space in the aisle for their refuse:
Man dumps his food into the isle after he ate what he wants [xpost from r/mildyinfuriating]
byu/MinecraftThugLife intrashy
This passenger ate what he wanted and decided he wanted to read without his meal tray in the way. I’ve certainly had flights where I’ve been frustrated with how long it can take flight attendants to return to pick up trays. There’s not enough room in many coach seats to work with the meal tray still there.
I think what impresses me most about this incident is that he dropped this on the ground but his cup of water is still full. It’s a miracle of modern physics.
In coach I’ll usually decline drinks, because a cup on the tray can easily be knocked over and takes up space. An open can is equally dangerous. I can keep my bottle of water in my bag for whenever I need it, and if I’m seated in back I can have snacks handy there too. The tray is for my laptop.
In first I can usually turn the meal tray so that it’s vertical and I can fit my laptop and the tray. If I’m not super hungry I’ll just skip the meal and keep working. The food isn’t going to be very good on domestic flights anyway.
… or you could just fly Air India through DEL where dozens of trays scattered across the aisles and trash just everywhere two hours into the flight are the norm.
Passengers and flight attendants both acting like spoiled children.
Flying on US domestic airlines is becoming such a chore.
Have yet to try Air India to sample its norm.
Similar drama about the long lost Golden Age of Cruise Line Travel: now that mass-marketing CLIA has borrowed marketing from ULCC Spirit and Southwest and inflicted cruise travelers with Walmart-of-the Seas and Dollar-Store-of-the-Seas, one recurring drama is dirty dishes left outside the stateroom door and impeding motorized wheelchair traffic.
Don’t judge me; jus’ sayin’.
Shame on the FAs for being horses’ asses. Shame on the passengers for not tearing the pizza box into smaller pieces to make handling the remains fit easily into the trash bags FAs collect the “service items” they”ve passed out during the flight.
The stubbornness of some people is hard to explain.
Probably the same people who put their hotel room service trays in the hall when finished eating.
The petulant and completely unnecessary insult about the flight attendant and the fact that the complainer can’t manage to find the correct forum to express supposed grievances tell me everything I need to know about this person writing the complaint: a tasteless idiot lacking in empathy and common sense.
No one is acting like an adult here . Sounds like AA possibly homophobic pilot trying to harass the F/A . Maybe they know each other ? Often times F/A s and pilots dont get along , but this is beyond childish behavior on both sides . It should never have happened.
Thank god I retired !
What do you know about pilot forums. Stick to what you know. Keep your nose out of things that don’t belong to you. Don’t worry, we’ll find the rat that’s giving you info.
It’s illegal to block the aisle. That should be the first concern because it’s a safety issue and safety is the most important consideration onboard, at least it should be.
@greg… Placing trays in the hall what many hotels ask for guests to do.
Fortunately, passengers refrained from leaving their filled air sickness bags in the aisle after their meal. Doing so could have prompted others to treat a used barf bag as a makeshift hockey puck, leading to an impromptu and messy game of kicking a foul-smelling vomit bag down the aircraft aisle into the first-class section to score bonus points. To play, position the bag behind row 12, then kick the bag as hard as you can. The passenger who propels the bag the closest to row one wins. Pro tip: No bags; use a discarded pizza box. It is recommended this game not be played on any regional jet.
Let’s be real. The airlines created this behavior when they stopped treating passengers as humans. What did they think with happen? Let’s go ba onto the days of even in economy a hot meal was offered on flight from Miami to Chicago Service is long gone unfortunately.
@greg.. have you ordered room service at a hotel? That’s what you’re supposed to do with the tray once finished. SMH
This is absolutely exhausting reading this. As a 35 year Flight Attendant, hand me the box, or the tray and let’s get it over with.
My pet peeve goes to those who think they are the only one on a plane, full, with 174 other people, and their crew is dealing with sick passengers, someone coming to the galley and asking us multiple questions about connecting flights, airport facilities, another cup of water or second, third or fourth drink, and then when we can escape to the aisle to walk through, they give us attitude, throw the trash at us, tap us on our rear end or grab our pants leg, or shout “HEY YOU!” to us as if we’re blind. It’s as if we’re dealing with children who don’t know any better.
Someone here used the term “sky waitresses”. That’s the mentality we are dealing with in the 21st Century. We are licensed by the FAA and carry a certificate of qualification. We attend yearly training after being hired and must successfully complete up to 8 weeks of training. If you read anything at all about aviation safety, and our role in security situations and evacuation management, especially knowing that an aircraft will usually catch on fire or have excessive smoke throughout, and there’s about 90 seconds to get everyone out of the aircraft, you know what the true role of cabin crew is.
This all after, perhaps, a 14 hour duty day the day before and maybe 6 hours of sleep.
I do the job because I enjoy the flexibility of my schedule and my benefits. I also love engaging with the real people who treat me like a fellow human instead of the hired help. It is beyond rewarding to have those kinds of customers.
Putting your garbage and meal trays in the aisle is a safety hazard, unsanitary and juvenile. Please grow up and act accordingly.
The result of shrinking seats. Treated like a sardine. Cause and effect.
I wouldn’t tear up the pizza box, that’s just going to make even more of a mess when remaining bits of.pizza are now all over.
The trash situation happens in retail environments all the time. I know I was in retail for 40 years. You know what my staff did and I did. We take the damn stuff up and smile to the customers and told them we appreciated their business. Only in the airline business is the business model turned upside down. Manage management first staff second customers third the complete opposite of every other business
Americans- the Lumpenproletariat of European trash from the 1880s
This didn’t happen when passengers dressed up and respected other people. Oh well, city bus in the sky.
Ah, those wily femine flight attendants.
Flew a short leg, Boston to Edinburgh on a Delta 767…5.5 hours.
My then 18 month son accidentally knocked my tray and spilled some rice from my dinner tray on the aisle floor
I could not pick it up, as I needed somewhere to put my tray to stand up…. the attendants made all these passing condescending comments…”fricking pigs in economy…uuggghhh….disgusting!”
I truly felt embarrassed and mortified.
I find the passenger’s reaction to not be at fault. Trying to punish a passenger for having a pizza box to throw away is crazy. This policy needs to be reversed and the flight attendants will need to be retrained because slipping on a pizza box is a safety hazard.
Queue the whiney flight attendants about their tough jobs and “qualifications”. Even fast food workers have qualifications (food handlers cards) and a similar attitude.
The flight attendants main role is passenger safety, not table service. It”s not a restaurant. If throwing trash in the aisle becomes a “thing”, it could hamper an emergency escape from the airplane. The goal is to get everyone off in 30 seconds. Imagine panicked passengers slipping on a pizza box as they dash off he plane!
Lazy aisle donkey
AA planes shouldn’t be hauling garbage. They should be hauled away AS garbage.
James T Kirk, Concierge Key Member
How dumb do you have to be to expect a FA to take your empty pizza box when they’re busy? Put the thing somewhere so it’s not in the way. I’d take it back to the galley after all the service is over and things are nice and quiet and ‘beg’ someone to dispose of it for me. This ain’t rocket science.
@Jc
Fantastic historical reference, good sir. After all, the 737 is the modern ‘chariot of the proletariat’ (the all-economy versions at least).
@Mike
Always fair to attack Air India for being bad, even in a post on Delta. As I’ve said before, one of the greatest benefits of VFTW is that Gary does not moderate the comments sections, like, at all, so please do continue with the subtle racism and ethnic slurs. I would say, though, you may want to try a little harder, like, include words like ‘savages’ or ‘filth’ so that the inevitable outrage that follows brings even more clicks, comments, and engagement to the site. It helps support the blog, after all. Thank you for your service.
First of all, as the article implies is that the pizza box was not being kicked down the aisle. It was kicked aside as The story goes. Not the clickbait headline. And granted I have to side with the passenger on this one. That flight attendant should have taken it, and not bitched about it. But as for the people who feel that they have every right to put their tray down on the floor in the aisle is a entitled little brat. Just wait a few minutes or a half an hour for the flight attendant to get your tray… Don’t put it on the floor!
I “tried to give the empty box to a very femine (sic) acting male flight attendant”.
Was this homophobic description of the flight attendant really necessary? Tell me your hate fags without actually saying that word. And the inability to spell “feminine” correctly only goes to highlight this passenger’s ignorance. This is the most disgusting thing in this article. And it’s only going to get worse this week and for the next four years.
If the poster wants me believe a post take the first three or four words off of “very femine acting male flight attendant” when you post.
I had experienced a fellow pax who was seated in front of me put his meal tray on top of my shoes on the 15 hrs Qatar Airways DOH – LAX flight in Y. He just treated the space underneath his seat as sort of his personal thrash bin. Needless to say I was NOT amused. But kudos to the QR crew who skillfully managed to put the man in his proper place while deescalating a brewing conflict.
If I see behavior like that, I’ll feed someone their tray, and gladly accept bthe charges upon landing. This is absurd and shouldn’t be accepted anywhere by anyone.
“and weren’t nonrevving”
Whatever that’s supposed to mean…
“The food isn’t going to be very good on domestic flights anyway.”
Nor on international flights unless you are forward of the curtain and maybe not even then. There IS a reason that the optional expensive “burgers on a plane” have been hailed by some as a breakthrough.
The comment about the flight attendant’s feminine attributes was very insulting and homophobic. It was a dog whistle comment. Disgusting.
Just when I thought flying couldn’t get any worse. No where in these comments, was there a suggestion of taking your personal trash to the galley YOURSELF. It won’t kill you and you’d be helping out the cabin crew. I guess that’s too much to ask?
You could fly Avelo where all the FAs do during the flight is collect trash… >_<
Non-revving, or non-revenue travel, is a benefit that allows airline employees and their families to fly for free or at a discount.
I predict one day soon AI will take over the role of safety in the form of holograms and robots will travel down the aisle providing table service. Then what will become of human flight attendants?