Your Flight Has Been Cleaned & Sanitized, But Paper Towels On The Ceiling Are From The Last Flight

by Gary Leff

One of the most common complaints about air travel on twitter is the ‘gotcha’ photos of dirty planes, which runs against the narrative airlines have sold to the public about enhanced cleaning regimens during the pandemic. Covid-19 never spread primarily by fomites in any case, but disinfecting everything became the sine qua non of taking the pandemic seriously early on and never fully left us.

Much of what did matter in air travel – rapid fresh air exchange and HEPA filtration – didn’t even apply to time spent in airports. And while it may have provided strong protection inflight, only United commendably ran its auxiliary power units on the ground to take advantage of this protective environment. United tells me they no longer do this, but that HEPA filtration still occurs on Airbus aircraft and Boeing 737s when they’re on ground power.

When we see dirty planes we wonder whether the things we can’t see are being being handled well. When we see broken planes we wonder whether maintenance we can’t see is being handled well. The connection isn’t always true but reasonable.

One of the odder dirty plane photos I’ve seen on twitter lately is paper towels stuffed into the aircraft ceiling on Delta. Condensation was leaking, and this is the airline’s solution to keep it from dripping on passengers. They didn’t want to take a plane out of service and cancel flights, and it wasn’t a mechanical issue that raised safety concerns. But, as the passenger posting on twitter notes, they also weren’t… changing the paper towels between flights.

Maybe Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker wasn’t wrong about Delta planes.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. Mollie clearly looking for something for free….. Tim Dunn will be here to explain in a minute ….

  2. That’s why I ALWAYS clean my entire seating/tray area, seat belt and every switch/button overhead with straight alcohol before I even sit down. And I use a washable chair cushion. Who knows what has been in that chair for hours.

  3. It apparently is news to some that cold air (as from air conditioning) creates moisture when it collides with warm air (as it an airplane cabin).

    There is nothing that can be done to correct that law of physics but there probably will be a note (or call) to a flight attendant crew (or more) not to stuff paper towels in the air conditioning vents which certainly does look tacky.

  4. I’ve been on some AA subcarrier ERJs on short East Coast routes where the plane “snowed” on me.

    These paper towel photos make it look like someone finally solved the problem.

  5. “Covid did it” no doubt. Or maybe Trump. Seems to me that they could have stuffed those towels in more neatly. I get a charge out of the outrage. Here’s an idea: go get some paper towels from the lav. Remove the scrunched up ones. Replace them with ‘clean’ paper towels. Make it look neat. Sit back down and enjoy your flight.

    Anyone who thinks the planes are ‘cleaned’ before they board is deluded. Bring your little alcohol wipes and swab down your whole area, paying special attention to the tray table and any other hidden objects. Then thoroughly clean your hands with a human-friendly wipe. After experiencing odd respiratory issues after flights, I started doing this years ago. Never had another sniffle.

  7. One of the last Delta flights I was on there was chocolate smeared all over the seat. Glad I got several alcohol wipes to clean up the seat myself, BTW this was in first class. But it that was obviously not done how clean was the rest of the area? SMH

Comments are closed.