The next time you travel, you might want to buy your coffee before boarding or wait until after your flight. A TikTok video shared by a user named Kevin, under the username @ichbinvin, has gone viral after revealing a startling detail about the coffee served on board airplanes.
The discussion originated from a response to a Reddit post asking, "Flight attendants, what are your industry's hidden secrets?" Kevin read from a comment written by a pilot, warning passengers against drinking onboard coffee. The pilot claimed that "water tanks are rarely, if ever, cleaned, and they use water from these to make coffee onboard."
In the video, Kevin agreed that airplane coffee is "disgusting" and advised travelers to "be at the airport 10 minutes earlier to buy a coffee in the terminal."
However, according to a flight attendant, the water tanks are not the worst part, as reported by The Independent. "The fact that the tanks, where the water is in, are rarely cleaned should be the least of your worries," he stated, adding, "For me, it has always been the way the flight crew has to clean the coffee pots. For some reason, we are not supposed to empty the coffee pots in the drain, we have to pour them down the toilet."
He emphasized that the cleaning of the coffee pot, which he claims includes pouring coffee into the toilet, is not necessarily hygienic.
"When you take a coffee pot and pour it down the toilet, to avoid making a big mess everywhere, you have to get close to the toilet," he said, continuing, "And I imagine there is some backsplash of particles, bacteria, or whatever, going right back into the coffee pot."
Kevin added that unless an "airline has some sort of Nespresso machine," he would not drink the regular coffee served on planes.
The video quickly went viral with over 161,000 views and numerous reactions. "The coffee story makes me cry," commented one user, while another wrote, "Coffee, tea, it's a no from me. Give me ginger ale." "I will NEVER drink airplane coffee again!!!," added a third.
