Perhaps supermodel Naomi Campbell was right – Last week, the businesswoman who became one of the world’s most sought after fashion models in the 1990’s revealed her pre-flight cleaning ritual which involved latex gloves and a very large pack of antibacterial wipes. Campbell obviously doesn’t trust airline cleaners and showed viewers how she would wipe down every possible surface around her seat.
It’s easy to scoff at what looks like Campbell’s almost obsessive-compulsive behaviour with cleanliness but as she explained – “it’s my health… it just makes me feel better.”
And when you watch the video below, you may well also be following Campbell’s lead and packing some antibacterial cleaning kit on your next flight. The now-viral video was posted to Twitter last night by Alafair Burke (@alafairburke) and has already racked up more than six million views.
My friend who doesn’t have twitter sent this from her flight. It belongs on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/qG6d54V5Dd
— Alafair Burke (@alafairburke) July 15, 2019
To put it bluntly, the seven-second toe-curling clip shows a passenger onboard a Delta Air Lines planes using their FEET to control the seatback television in front of them.
It’s not clear when the video was recorded, although it seems like it was taken in the last few days. We’ve decided to republish it because you can’t identify the culprit.
As passenger shaming videos go, this has got to be pretty high up there. The passenger is sitting at a bulkhead seat so, thankfully he isn’t pushing a seat in front but we wouldn’t be surprised if his seatmates were pretty grossed out by these antics.
Most planes are only ‘dressed’ in-between flights and the vast majority of airlines only disinfect surfaces such as tray tables and seatback screen at pretty irregular intervals. In fact, recent studies have revealed that headrests and seatback pockets were the dirtiest places around someone’s seat – both contained bacteria such as Staphylococcus, E. coli, and Hemolytic.
Other studies have found E. coli on tray tables – which would suggest faecal matter (possibly from baby changing).
Delta has bucked the trend in U.S. aviation by actively installing more personal seatback screens than any other airline in the world. The Atlanta-based airline has over 600 aircraft with embedded IFE at every seat and the carrier recently announced a next-generation inflight entertainment system that has debuted on its first Airbus A330neo.
The airline says it will “continue to invest in seat-back screens because customers continue to tell us they’re important.”
