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Jess Hardiman
A flight attendant has revealed there's a 'disgusting’ reason why you should never drink coffee during a flight, having shared their words of wisdom on TikTok.
There are all kinds of tips and tricks we can pick up from TikTok, whether it’s a way to clean your grubby oven or an iPhone travel hack.
Some, however, you may feel you were better off not knowing – like some insider intel about the coffee we get served aboard a plane.
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TikToker and flight attendant Kevin (@ichbinvin) posted a video on the matter, having noticed the topic crop up on Reddit, where one person asked: “Flight attendants, what’s the dirty little secrets of your industry?”
One of the answers, which came from a pilot rather than a flight attendant, warned against drinking the coffee on board.
“The water tanks on airplanes are rarely, if ever cleaned, and they use this water to make coffee on board,” they said.
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“I don't want to think about cold and bacteria growing in those tanks."
But according to @ichbinvin, there’s actually something much worse about getting your coffee fix in the air.
He explained in his TikTok video: “The fact that the tanks rarely get cleaned where the water’s in should be the least of your concern.
"For me, it’s always been the way that flight attendants have to clean coffee pots.
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“For whatever reason, we’re not supposed to empty coffee pots in drains, we’re supposed to dump them down the toilet.”
Kevin claimed that coffee pots on commercial planes are rarely cleaned, and that they’re often just emptied straight into the onboard toilets as they’re not supposed to be put down any drains.
This might sound fine in theory, but just think about the logistics for a second.
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He continued: "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."
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GROSS.
Kevin added: "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."
Agreeing with the Reddit pilot that plane coffee is 'disgusting', he advised getting to the airport '10 minutes earlier' so you can 'buy a coffee in the terminal'.