Even if you’ve managed to avoid the “worst” seat onboard your flight, there are some key areas around your seat that a flight attendant has warned passengers should avoid touching.
After every single flight, the crew do their best to clean up the aircraft, though on short-haul routes the turnaround between flights can be short.
That means some parts of the plane might not be cleaned as throughly as you might hope.
One flight attendant who has over six years of experience went so far as to say passengers should “never, ever, ever, ever use or put anything in the seat pocket.”
Even if the seat pocket is cleared of rubbish, there may not be time to disinfect it between departures and unfortunately, you never know what has been left in the seat pocket on a previous journey.
Posting to a Reddit forum dedicated to “disturbing” flight attendant insights, the anonymous crew member wrote: “I always recommend you never, ever, ever, ever use or put anything in the seat pocket. They are cleared of rubbish but are never ‘cleaned’.”
They went on to detail some of the most disgusting things they had uncovered while cleaning the flight of leftover rubbish.
“I have pulled out and seen all sorts being pulled out from there,” they disclosed.
“Dirty tissues, sick bags, knickers, socks, gum, half-sucked sweets, apple cores, and then next flight you go and put your phone, laptop or iPad in there.” [SIC]
The flight attendant’s claims were also backed up by another anonymous crew member who shared tales of some of the worst things they too had found in seat pockets.
They said: “I once discovered vomit outside of the paper bag which spilt through the seat pocket. It was absolutely awful, but what can you do?” [SIC]
Long-haul flights tend to offer a little more time for the aircraft to be fully cleaned between departures.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, it’s also worth noting that many airlines have ramped up their cleaning procedures between flights to reduce the risk of germs.