Flight Attendant Reveals The 2 Lies Crew Members Tell Passengers On Every Flight
Standret | Shutterstock Being a flight attendant is a job that requires carefully managing total strangers; flight attendants are constantly lying to passengers to do it, according to one crew member.
In fact, they shared that there are two lies flight attendants tell passengers every single flight, not just here and there. Don’t worry, they’re nothing diabolical, and one of them is even a true act of kindness! It’s all just part of how these professionals get through their work day, and get you to your destination in one piece.
The 2 lies flight attendants tell passengers every flight:
If you’ve ever worked in customer service in any capacity, you know the drill — sometimes maintaining either your own sanity or the customer’s requires a bit of bending the truth. And when your job is being a flight attendant, where your primary responsibility is keeping people safe and alive, that goes double. Maybe triple.
So what truths are flight attendants bending? Well, there are surely tons of them, but there are two in particular that help grease the wheels, or the wings, as it were, during a flight.
1. They will turn up the cabin temperature
Planes are pretty notoriously chilly, and everyone loves to complain, especially that specific genre of person who is always cold, even when it’s 90 degrees, and feels the need to make it everyone’s problem. They are, of course, the ones hitting the little flight attendant call button above their seat, begging to have the heat turned up, to the dismay of half the rest of the plane.
Thankfully for those of us with normal body temperatures and the good sense to bring a sweater, that cheerful “of course!” you get from your flight attendant when you ask them to turn the heat up? LOL, not happening!
The flight attendant, who spoke with multiple media outlets, explained that flight crews almost never oblige because while we’re all sitting comfortably (okay, just kidding, uncomfortably) in our seats, flight attendants are up on their feet, constantly up and down the aisle, wrangling that drink cart with their heads near the ceiling where all the heat is.
Hence, that cheerful “you got it” in response to your request is secretly an "absolutely not,” so they can avoid sweating through their airline-issued shirts. Bring a sweatshirt!
2. The coffee on night flights is always decaf
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If you’re on an evening flight and enjoying a nice cup of Joe after you weird airline cuisine, the lift you feel like you’re getting from the caffeine is probably just the placebo effect: There’s likely no caffeine in there whatsoever.
The flight attendant said that on these types of flights, they tend to serve everyone decaf so they can have an easier time sleeping. Or, more likely, so that there’s a higher chance passengers will conk out and leave them alone! And with how common incidents with belligerent passengers seem to have become in recent years, who can blame them for trying to ensure as many of us go the heck to sleep as possible.
Either way, they’re trying to prevent you from being all caffeinated and wired up as the sun sets. The flight attendant said they do this especially for business class passengers, who are often flying on red eyes, after which they have to go directly to work. So if you’ve ever flown business and actually awakened refreshed, you probably have a flight attendant to thank.
They also revealed some creepy hygiene issues on planes, too.
This one’s not a lie, per se, but it will surely not go over well with any germaphobes: That coffee we were just discussing? It was made with likely dirty water.
“The water tanks don't get cleaned and are probably full of limescale, but we still drink it and use it for tea and coffee,” the flight attendant said. Presumably, the heating of the water for coffee kills whatever creepy-crawlies are in that water tank, but… well, flyer beware. Unless you’re one of those weirdos so unbothered by germs that you go barefoot into an airplane bathroom.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
