Those looking for a pick-me-up on a flight might want to turn to something other than the onboard coffee machines, as a new interview with a flight attendant reveals the water used to make their cups of joe isn’t necessarily sanitary.
The flight attendant, known for convenience as “Betty,” did an interview with Vice following the holiday season travel rush. Betty asked to remain anonymous so that she could freely dish on all the dirty details of her job without losing it.
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Betty shared some interesting insights and some predictable ones as well. She told the reporter that the bathrooms on airplanes are the most disgusting places on Earth. From there, the subject turned to coffee in a shocking twist.
“Besides the bathrooms, what’s the grossest thing on planes that we don’t hear about?”asked Betty’s interviewer.
“Coffee,” the beleaguered flight attendant said. “Don’t drink the coffee on airplanes. It’s the same potable water that goes through the bathroom system.”
“We recently had a test for E. coli in our water and it didn’t pass,” she continued, “and then maintenance came on and hit a couple buttons and it passed. So, avoid any hot water or tea. Bottled and ice is fine, of course.”
The revelations surely horrified some frequent fliers, who rely on the coffee offered on board to get them through jet lag and exhaustion. Perhaps the most gut-wrenching part about Betty’s statement is that maintenance workers simply “hit a couple buttons,” and suddenly the water passed inspection. Without any in-depth knowledge of water filtration systems or bacterial waste, that point left many casual readers swearing off of coffee for the rest of their flying days.
Betty had plenty of other salacious stories from the other side of air travel to share. When asked about the rule to turn off cell phones before a flight, she confirmed that it was “precautionary.”
“Nobody turns off their phones,” she said. “I don’t, even. All of those commands are really just precautionary. You’re not allowed to get up when taxiing to the gate, but we’re going three miles an hour. What’s actually going to happen?”
Of course, the reporter had to ask her about the legendary “mile-high” club as well, but Betty said it’s not as common as movies and TV shows make it out to be.
“On the bigger double-decker planes they have flight attendants whose entire job it is to sit at that bottom bathroom and make sure no couples are going into it,” she revealed, “but on smaller planes, for shorter flights, the attendants aren’t watching you like you think we are. We’re on our phones in the back with the others or doing our jobs.”
