Why Airline Crews Skip The Coffee And Tea On Board

[TeamPooka]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoglia/2013/10/15/why-airline-crews-skip-the-coffee-and-tea-on-board/

With all that free coffee and tea available to pilots and flight attendants, have you ever wondered why so many crewmembers can be seen boarding flights with their own cups of java? Well, the dirty little secret of flying is that the water used to make the coffee and tea is, well, dirty. A recent NBC investigative report confirms what airline employees have known for years. Think twice about drinking the water – unless you see it served from a bottle, preferably one you open yourself.

The NBC report obtained documents from the EPA which confirm that years after the EPA began a program to clean up airplane water, the problem of bacteria in the drinking water persists on a high percentage of airline flights. While the EPA first focused on this problem in 2004, the airlines have been working on it far longer, albeit not as successfully as passengers would hope.

Thirty years ago when I was working for USAir, we began a process to bleach the water tanks that hold the water and flush out the system. This was done on a regular basis. Yet, it was clear to anyone working on these tanks and their hoses that a lot of sediment was accumulating in the system, sediment that was akin to pond scum. Even after the tanks were bleached and flushed, some sediment always remained. It’s hard to drink anything made with water from those tanks after seeing what accumulates in there.

According to the NBC report, the EPA does not have any confirmed reports of people getting sick from airplane water. Still, experts consulted by NBC warned that infants and those with compromised immune systems should stay away from airline drinking water.
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Yuck.
I never drink the water on board and always bring my own.
Just canned soda from the attendants.

[CK_John]

1. Missing out on all those anti-body building germs, we are totally too sterile.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. There's another reason: coffee and tea are diuretics.

It's pretty inconvenient for flight crews, especially pilots, to have to leave their positions to go to the bathroom all the time, so they tend to stick with the bottled water. I used to work for a major airline, flew often, and I did occasionally drink the coffee - with no ill effects. On early morning flights, so did the pilots. I suppose the water in the tanks isn't the best, but I never heard of anyone getting sick from it.

[TeamPooka]

3. also those glass drinking glasses in your hotel room are filthy.

always use the sealed plastic ones

[RebelOne]

11. Every hotel I have ever stayed at have always had sealed plastic ones.

And when I was in Mexico in both Acapulco and Mexico City, the hotels all had bottled water in the bathrooms because the drinking water in Mexico is known to cause Montezuma's Revenge in out of country visitors.

[cloudbase]

4. The pots get emptied every now and then,

but they're almost never properly washed.

[Mika]

5. Biofilm is a problem with just about any water system. eom

[GeorgeGist]

6. The first sentence makes no sense.

If the onboard water is bad, I'd expect a whole lotta pilots et al to bring their own.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. Never drink the water. Try to avoid breathing the air :-)

[yawnmaster]

8. I've seen pilots and FA drinking the airplane coffee! I don't think it is a problem...

for a number of reasons.
some being...
heating the water to coffee/tea temperatures will help sanitize the water.
things growing in just water aren't the most harmful things.
The human body is made to be challenged with antigens. Long term, a sterile environment is harmful to the immune system.

[SoCalDem]

9. Yep.. the people who are germ-phobic seem to be the ones getting sick all the time

We raised our boys to be "free-range".. they played in the dirt..drank from the hose.. did all the "dangerous" stuff.. Friends of ours kids were raised "under glass" & were the sickly ones with "allergies" to everything and who seemed to "have" everything their parents had just read about or seen on tv..

[MicaelS]

10. Much ado about little of nothing.

the EPA does not have any confirmed reports of people getting sick from airplane water.