Passengers freak out over how ‘gross’ plane seats are — as proven in swab test: ‘I’ll never fly again’
Sure, flying by the seat of your pants can be fun — but just how filthy is that seat?
Airplanes are notoriously unsanitary. From the carpets to the overhead bins and the windows to the walls, germs abound.
Now, a scientific swab test has unveiled the eye-popping amount of grime there is where frequent flyers plant their behinds.
“How dirty is a wee flight?” uncleanliness content creator @HowDirtyIs questioned in the caption of a trending TikTok clip.
The footage featured the researcher boarding a Southwest Airlines plane, collecting surface samples of a seat’s armrest, tray table, window shade and plane safety manual. After carefully gathering the gunk-laced data, he brought the swabs to a lab for testing.
And the results were disgusting.
They’re far worse than those of a previous experiment he conducted on the seats at airport gates — for which the analyst swiped the sludge off of chairs at NYC’s La Guardia Airport. Thankfully for Gothamites on the go, only a few “skin bugs” showed up in the findings.
But what surfaced in his most recent research on passenger seats was positively skin-crawling.
“I suggest [wearing] a long-sleeve shirt,” said the investigator while holding up a grimy petri dish filled with bacteria from the airplane armrest.
It’s fashionable, yet health-forward advice that an American Airlines flight attendant also offered travelers, saying, “The more you cover the surface of your skin, the more protection for your largest organ.”
But the @HowDirtyIs investigation didn’t end there — at the yucky chair.
The serial swabber went on to share the revolting results of the window shade, tray table and safety manual tests, which all came back to reveal the polluted putridity that plagues an air-tripper’s seat and surroundings.
“New fear unlocked,” groaned a germaphobe.
“The safety manual isn’t very safe!” added a skeeved commenter.
“This is why I carry sanitizer and sanitizer wipes!! I clean everything!” a proud clean-freak claimed.
“And now,” swore a scaredy-cat, “I’ll never fly again!!!”
