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Flight attendant reveals why we should never drink the coffee on a plane
Published 16:25 14 Apr 2025 BST
Updated 12:45 8 Mar 2026 GMT
Homeself improvement
Guess we'll have to resort to having an in-flight glass of vino
If you're someone who can see past the taste of airplane coffee, the following information may be enough for you to turn down your next in-flight caffeine craving.
One flight attendant has decided to give flyers a heads-up before they accept that cup of joe while in the sky.
The silver lining? We'll definitely have a better chance of sleeping when flying from now on without it.
The warning stems from a Reddit thread with the question 'Flight attendants, what’s the dirty little secrets of your industry?' where a pilot warned passengers from drinking coffee on board a plane.
In the Reddit reply, the pilot explained why.
"Not a flight attendant, but pilot: Don't drink the coffee on board. The water tanks on airplanes are rarely, if ever cleaned, and they use this water to make coffee on board.
"I don't want to think about the mold [sic] and bacteria growing in those tanks."
Backing up this claim is TikToker and flight attendant, Kevin (@ichbinvin), who also urged flyers to either get their java before they fly or after they land.
Kevin offers even more of an unnerving reason why it should be avoided, revealing their protocol for cleaning the coffee pots, or lack thereof.
The flight attendant says these pots are rarely cleaned, just emptied in a rather unsettling place.
“For whatever reason, we’re not supposed to empty coffee pots in drains, we’re supposed to dump them down the toilet.
"When you take a coffee pot and dump it in the toilet, in order to not make a huge mess everywhere, you have to get a little close to the toilet.
"I imagine there is some kind of backsplash of particles, bacteria that goes directly back into the coffee pot which gets put right back into the coffee maker.
"So unless the airline you're flying with has an espresso maker on the plane, I would not get regular drip coffee on the plane."
Kevin advises anyone who, for example, needs caffeine to function, needs to be alert, or just wants a hot drink, to get to the airport '10 minutes earlier' so they can buy one in the terminal.
I'm going to take his word for it and I will never complain about a €5 airport coffee ever again.
