Flight Attendants Reveal 9 Things They Never Do As Passengers

A lot of people are frequent flyers these days, but their knowledge of air travel still can’t compare with the level that flight attendants possess. This is especially clear when crew members travel as passengers themselves.

“Working as a flight attendant changes your perspective on a lot of things,” Francesco Lentini, a flight attendant with a major U.S. carrier, told HuffPost. “You learn that many people are traveling for different reasons, whether it be vacation or a funeral, so you learn to be empathetic. You also realize that some people can be inconsiderate and are not thinking about their fellow passengers.”

To combat that lack of consideration and offer guidance for air travelers, HuffPost asked Lentini and other flight attendants what behaviors they always avoid when they fly as passengers.

“When I’m a passenger on a flight, you’ll never catch me taking off my shoes, walking barefoot, or casually putting my feet all over the walls and seats,” said Jay Robert, a former flight attendant and the founder of A Fly Guy Travels.

In addition to the lack of social decorum, there are also hygiene considerations.

“Having witnessed what goes on behind the scenes, I’m not about to expose my bare skin to the floors of an aircraft,” Robert noted. “I’ve seen the effort the crew puts into ‘cleaning’ the toilets on flights, and that damp bathroom floor isn’t damp from sink water.”

He added: “Airplane carpets are typically spot-cleaned, if cleaned at all during the daily rotations. I’ve encountered every imaginable human fluid stain on those carpets. The goal for aircraft cleaners is often just to mask the smell; they don’t have the time, especially when the plane is in operation, to thoroughly clean the carpet.”

“As a passenger, I would never stand in the aircraft galley for a lengthy period of time,” Lentini said. “This is the flight attendant’s workspace where we work and eat. Last thing we want is to have a passenger doing yoga poses in our faces while we are having our lunch.”

Robert similarly emphasized the limited breaks that the cabin crew might get between and during flights.

“During flights on the London-to-Dubai route, our free time in uniform was a mere 15 minutes within a 15-hour time frame, usually spent hastily grabbing a meal that often got interrupted by someone needing assistance,” he explained.

“As a passenger now, I make a conscious…