Flight attendant’s ‘disgusting’ reason to never drink coffee on plane

A flight attendant has shared the “disgusting” reason he would never drink coffee on a plane, advising travellers to follow suit.

An American flight attendant has revealed the two gross reasons he would never drink coffee on a plane.

Kevin, who often posts videos about his job on TikTok, said the coffee on board was “disgusting” and advised passengers to get to the airport earlier and buy a hot beverage in the terminal instead.

Addressing a pilot’s anonymous post on Reddit saying the water tanks used to make coffee on board a commercial aircraft are rarely cleaned, Kevin said this fact “should be the least of your concerns”.

“For me it’s always been the way flight attendants have to clean out coffee pots,” Kevin said in a TikTok video that has amassed 180,000 views.

“For whatever reason we’re not supposed to empty coffee pots in drains, we’re supposed to dump it down a toilet.”

Flight attendant Kevin says he will never drink coffee on a plane. Picture: TikTok / @ichbinvin

Kevin shares videos about his job online but doesn’t disclose the airline he works for. Picture: TikTok / @ichbinvin

He said in order to empty the coffee pot in the aircraft toilet and not make a huge mess, they had to get close to the toilet.

“I imagine that there’s some kind of splashback of particles [and] bacteria, whatever, that goes directly back into the coffee pot, which gets put right back into the coffee maker,” he said.

“So unless the airline you’re flying has an espresso maker on the plane, I would not get coffee.”

Some flight attendants agreed in the comments they would never drink the coffee on a plane, while others said they had always emptied the coffee pot in a bin or galley drains.

Kevin’s TikTok warning to passengers about consuming coffee on a plane is not the first to go viral on the topic.

After a couple of widespread clips from flight attendants last year about the “disgusting” water tanks, an aircraft technician made a video disputing the claim they never get cleaned.

He said they were “sanitised regularly, four times a year if not more” and explained an “ozone treatment” was one way of doing this.

“[The machine] will be hooked up to the aircraft and ozone treated water will be pumped into the tanks and all the lines disinfecting and cleaning out any kind of contaminants.

“Once again, it is done four times a year, if not more and it is strictly regulated.”

He said the water is also tested by engineers who will ship sample kits to laboratories who perform tests on the water itself making sure there are no contaminants and no bacteria.