Starting today, a United flight attendant will greet you at the door of the aircraft with a smile…and a hand wipe.
Flight attendants will offer individually-packaged hand sanitizer wipes from a basket using tongs, almost like hot towel or snack basket service. They’ve been told to ask each passenger, “Would you like a hand sanitizer wipe?” while boarding.
United claims this is for public health, telling flight flight attendants:
“We are putting this safety measure in place as we continue to implement policies and procedures to help mitigate against the spread of COVID-9 and ensure our workplace is clean and sanitary for our customers and employees.”
Each narrowbody aircraft will be provisioned with 250 wipes while each widebody will have 500. United has stressed that only passengers who want one should be given one and that the pre-loaded supply will need to last multiple flights. Wipes will be replenished at all hubs plus Cleveland, Guam, and Honolulu (whether deliberate or not, Guam is no longer referred to as a hub in this memo, shared with Live and Let’s Fly).
United has warned flight attendants not to place any wipes in the lavatory, because these wipes could cause the lavatory waste system to clog if flushed in the toilet.
CONCLUSION
Hand wipes represent a practical amenity, even if they provide more peace of mind than actual protection. As much as I do use hand wipes, remember that they do not replace washing your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds, which should still be a very frequent part of your daily routine.
The problem isn’t wiping our hands to prevent spread of germs. It’s the piss poor job that airlines do in cleaning their aircraft ahead of boarding. For Pete’s sake. How hard can that be? Instead of wet wipes, provide cans of Clorox wipes at the entry so that passengers can grab a few to clean their own tray tables, arm rests, vent controls and window shades.
After having sat through a 6 hour flight across the aisle from a man in UA FC who picked his nose and wiped it on the seat, I will NEVER AGAIN trust the cleanliness of anything inside of the cabin. EWWWW.
I ALWAYS travel with Clorox wipes and Wet Ones and I always bring enough to share.
@Yasmin: could not agree more. The speed they turn planes in and out of the gates added lots of efficiency to their operations but God knows how they “cleaned” the plane in 5 minutes. What is amazing is that hotels and airlines will now start claiming new cleaning policies that are nothing more than what anyone would expect from them always and not only when a pandemic hits the world. Planes are filthy and disgusting so a single sachet of hand sanitizer works more as a marketing tool than something that will change anything.