29 March 2023 , 11:14
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A flight attendant has begged people to stop taking their shoes off when flying.
Keeping your shoes on while flying is widely considered to be the courteous thing to do, largely due to the potential for sock smell and generally giving fellow passengers the ick.
Leysha Perez, a regional flight attendant in the US, has offered another good reason for people to keep their feet contained.
"It's not water that you're seeing on the bathroom floor sometimes, it's probably bodily fluids that you're walking in," she told Insider.
Another flight attendant agreed, demanding that people should keep their shoes on "for the love of all things".
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This kind of behaviour is not recommended (Getty Images)They said that urine was tracked up and down the aisles on people's shoes and then soaked up in people's socks.
"Walking throughout the aircraft barefoot or even with socks is disgusting," the grossed out flight attendant added.
Jagdish Khubchandani, a public health professor at New Mexico State University, previously told The Huffington Post that it's "unlikely" liquid on the floor of plane toilets is water.
"On long-duration flights, I have noticed people - often, kids - walk barefoot towards or into the bathroom," he said in 2021.
"This is a very unhygienic tendency with potential for infection if someone has skin cuts and injuries on their foot."
The quick turnaround of many short haul flights mean that there is often little time to do a deep clean on commercial jets.
During the coronavirus pandemic some airlines increased the regularity of their cleaning schedules and improved hygiene protocols.
It seems unlikely that any airline would be able to keep bathrooms spic and span while a plane is in the air however.
Recently a flight attendant posted on Reddit about the challenges of keeping a commercial aircraft clean.
“I certainly can't speak for every station and every airline regarding cleanliness, but, I worked the closing shift for a while," they wrote.
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“We would get six RONs (remain over nights) nightly and, after offloading pax and bags, we would: thoroughly clean the galley and lav, vacuum the floors, clean out the seat backs, and wipe down the tray tables with disinfectant.
“Remember: unless it's the first flight of the day, there have been people – perhaps several flights' worth – on that aircraft too, and there's not enough time during the day to do any more than pick up big pieces of trash.
“Aircraft, however, are cleaned nightly, and aircraft that terminate at hubs are thoroughly cleaned by a professional contractor.”