"With money tight, many planes are filthy"

Sunday, October 22, 2006

With money tight, many planes are filthy 
By Jeff Bailey 
The New York (NY) Times 


ATLANTA - Seatback pockets hiding sticky surprises, carpets with patterns
that can no longer conceal the curious stains, overripe lavatories and
crevices oozing snack grit and plain old grime.

Increasingly, that describes the modern airliner, an untidy tube hurtling
through the sky full of passengers who cannot wait to land and go wash their
hands with disinfectant soap. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but in
the airline industry it has taken a back seat to financial survival.

Airlines, which have been paring their fleets to cut costs, are flying their
jets fuller than ever - and some of them are just a little too crowded not
to smell. After dispensing with the expense of most meal service, airlines
invited passengers to bring their own food aboard, and many planes now land
littered with a smorgasbord of wrappers and leftovers.

Once on the ground, there are fewer employees to tidy up, thanks to
widespread layoffs. And planes, which make money only when they fly, sit at
the gate for shorter periods, often making cleanup a rush job.

"You put your hand in the seatback pocket and there's an open McDonald's
ketchup container in there," said Joe Brancatelli, a frequent flier who runs
an advice Web site for business travelers. Tidiness has declined in recent
years, he said. "The problem is they've made so many cuts."

When cleaning is outsourced, for instance, "it's another part of the airline
business that goes to the lowest bidder," he said.

And when outside food was invited aboard, routines for taking care of trash
went awry. "A lot of inconvenient garbage," Brancatelli said. "The airlines
can't control it. They can't plan for it."

Little wonder, then, that Delta Air Lines, regrouping in bankruptcy, noticed
earlier this year that it had let its 438 big jets become, in the words of
Tim Canavan, director of operations, "dingy and dirty."

While the industry standard for deep-cleaning a jetliner - a process similar
to having your car professionally detailed - is roughly every 30 days, Delta
had let its schedule lapse to every 15 to 18 months.

Just months after Delta began installing new interiors, including pricey
leather seats, Canavan and his staff were surprised to find that some of the
planes were already filthy. Thus began a humbling airlinewide effort to
become neater. Deep cleaning - brushing, scrubbing and vacuuming - now
occurs at least every 30 days on Delta planes, bringing Delta up to par.

"There's still a long ways they have to go," said Linda Hirneise, who heads
the travel practice at J.D. Power & Associates, a market-research firm. Her
company surveys passengers about airline cleanliness, and this year the
top-ranked carrier - JetBlue - received an 8.49 on a 10-point scale.

But in Hirneise's opinion, "anything below a nine is flunking."

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