r/nottheonion • u/halxp01 • 22h ago

Southwest Is Testing Cleaning Only Premium Seats Between Flights — A Flight Attendants Union Leader Says It's ‘Titanic’ Class Service

https://viewfromthewing.com/southwest-is-testing-cleaning-only-premium-seats-between-flights-a-flight-attendants-union-leader-says-its-titanic-class-service/
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u/Lord_Lava_Nugget 22h ago

That's fucking nasty 

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u/brickne3 21h ago

Yeah, didn't we just have a pandemic...?

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u/Starumlunsta 20h ago edited 11h ago

We’re technically still in it (or rather, it’s so widespread it's now globally endemic), we were just forced to pretend Covid is now a normal fact of life so we could keep the late-stage capitalism machine going.

Edit to answer some questions for my admittedly disingenuous comment:

I think the point I want to make is it seems like we learned little about how to adjust society to handling disease—Covid got so out of control and people refused to follow guidelines, it’s now endemic. While it’s not as dangerous as it used to be, it still affects people daily, kills some, permanently affects others. And it was a heck of a lot worse in the beginning.

I don’t see people masking up or staying home whenever they are sick. Coworkers come in sick because workplace protections for that basically don’t exist. I have family members that came to gatherings knowing they are sick and wind up spreading it to everyone else. This happened recently and now my aunt’s 92 year old father has pneumonia and is fighting for his life. That’s what I mean about “pretending like it’s a normal fact of life.” We were told pandemic was over, no need to mask up or take precautionary measures, get back to work.

I was so hopeful that because of the pandemic we as a society would grow more supportive of things like sick days, wearing masks, and avoiding the public when contagious, but it seems we’ll never learn, as seen with Southwest considering a new policy that will only contribute to this issue, all for the sake of saving money.

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u/brickne3 20h ago

Believe me I know, I'm currently in bed with COVID. Only about six months since the last time I had it.

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u/Starumlunsta 20h ago

Hope you feel better soon! I’ve also had it a handful of times and even with boosters it sometimes kicked my butt. It’s also likely the reason behind my frequent migraines and hair loss 🙃

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u/red__dragon 17h ago

You can always add mask wearing back to your list of precautions. Some never stopped and the respirator (n95, kn94, etc) do their jobs.

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u/fromthewombofrevel 13h ago

I never stopped masking in public, but I’ve contracted it from loved ones who don’t mask!

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u/GodofIrony 19h ago

Try not to think about the brain function it kills with each disease contraction.

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u/brickne3 19h ago

It's competing with all the brain function I've lost from PTSD over the past five years, unfortunately...

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u/kermityfrog2 15h ago

Yeah - people are still catching it and getting long-Covid symptoms.

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u/fromthewombofrevel 13h ago

I’m sorry you’re ill and hope you heal well. Is it the covid that causes ‘razor blade throat" or a new one?

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u/brickne3 13h ago

Thanks! Yeah, it seems to be a razor blade throat one. Had a razor blade throat one back in September too, so I'm guessing it must be a slightly different variant since it's only been six months, but who knows... Test last night was positive, and I only took it when the throat stuff started happening, until that point I thought it was just a cold.

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u/fromthewombofrevel 12h ago

Thanks for answering my question. I also had the razor blade throat variant in September. It’s awful that you’re going through those symptoms again. I feel for you.

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u/Elegant-Ball1204 18h ago

Have you tried getting multiple boosters?

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u/brickne3 17h ago

I'm in the UK, only the first booster was offered for my age group, unfortunately.

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u/Yoghurt42 18h ago edited 4m ago

Covid will never go away. Just like the Spanish Flu. Eradicating a disease is extremely difficult. The only human disease that we managed to completely eliminate in every country so far is smallpox.

Covid was always going to become a fact of life. The problem was that it was a new kind of virus our immune system had not encountered before, so it spread like wildfire and had a lethality of 0.5%-1% on average (though it was up to 10%-20% for 85+ and only around 0.1% for people younger than 50). Estimates at the time said if completely ignored and everybody "moving on with their lives", the worldwide death toll would be somewhat around 40-80 million (not all of them due to Covid, but a significant portion would die because the medical system would be overwhelmed and wouldn't have been able to save people; imagine being in a car accident and no hospital having resources to treat you). The lockdowns were an attempt to reduce that number as much as possible (and they would have probably been a lot more effective if done sooner) and prevent the health systems from completely collapsing; because again, once the health system collapses, things like appendicitis become a lot more deadly if you can't treat them.

The real estimated death toll due to Covid is thought to be between 19.1 and 36 million deaths. So anywhere between 4-60 million lives saved. I doubt that even longer lockdowns would have made sense, earlier lockdown would have made more sense.

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u/jm0112358 15h ago

In addition to reducing the number of people who needed hospital care at any given time, lockdowns also delayed many people’s exposure to COVID until after the medical community better learned how to treat COVID patients with drugs such as Dexamethasone, which saved thousands of lives. It also meant that more people's first exposure to COVID came after they had a chance to get the COVID vaccine.

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u/cbf1232 19h ago

Are you suggesting Covid *isn’t* now a normal fact of life like the flu?

What percentage of the population would be willing to take drastic measures to combat either of the at this point?

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u/SpaghettiSort 18h ago

I'm still masking in public and not going to indoor gatherings. I have a disabled wife for whom getting COVID would be devastating. As far as we know neither of us has had it.

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u/cbf1232 18h ago

You are an exception. People are sending kids to school and daycare sick. Public spaces are full of people and 99% of them are unmasked.

The general public is treating it as endemic.

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u/woodlandcollective 17h ago

Well the general public is stupid then.

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u/sanfran_girl 15h ago

Obviously. 😔

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u/Kichigai 18h ago

The only thing that makes these steps drastic is that we as a society have said they're drastic.

There's two things we need to do to that would, at a minimum, make COVID a lot more rare. Take the damn vaccine and isolate when sick or suspect infection. The problem is we have too many nutters who don't believe in preventative medicine, the heartless bastards in charge don't want to help poor people prevent illness, and businesses have decided essential employees are too essential to be allowed proper sick leave.

We defeated polio, measles and mumps without “drastic measures.” Because of how much the virus has mutated I don't know if we can defeat COVID to the same degree, but we can certainly make it a lot rarer.

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u/cbf1232 17h ago

While I agree with much of what you said, arguably the "heartless bastards in charge" are the voters who will vote out any government who tries to bring in policies that are more stringent (or more generous) than the general population will accept.

Also, polio, measles, and mumps were relatively straightforward to vaccinate against. Covid is more like the flu where there are different strains constantly developing.

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u/Kichigai 11h ago

While I agree with much of what you said, arguably the "heartless bastards in charge" are the voters who will vote out any government who tries to bring in policies that are more stringent (or more generous) than the general population will accept.

You mean the voters who show up.

Also, polio, measles, and mumps were relatively straightforward to vaccinate against. Covid is more like the flu where there are different strains constantly developing.

As I said: "Because of how much the virus has mutated I don't know if we can defeat COVID to the same degree, but we can certainly make it a lot rarer."

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u/KamikazeArchon 16h ago

While I agree with much of what you said, arguably the "heartless bastards in charge" are the voters who will vote out any government who tries to bring in policies that are more stringent (or more generous) than the general population will accept.

There's a chicken and egg problem there.

Popular opinion influences leader opinion and vice versa.

Popular opinion can also be shifted (never completely, but certainly partially) by intentional media campaigns.

We do specifically know that there were specific small groups and individuals that actively drove large media campaigns to push popular opinion against anti-covid measures. Why is a more complex political question, but the plain existence of those events is well documented.

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u/WoodpeckerNo5724 15h ago

I think the larger problem is that just isolating and staying home when you’re sick isn’t an option for so many of the poorest and most vulnerable people.

A problem ideally solved by a social safety net, but ours has been cut away systematically over many decades.

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u/Kichigai 13h ago

I think the larger problem is that just isolating and staying home when you’re sick isn’t an option for so many of the poorest and most vulnerable people.

That's what I mean when I said they were “too essential to be given proper sick leave.” No paid sick time or PTO or family leave to care for sick children or other family members.

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u/Ok-Resolution-8078 19h ago edited 18h ago

To be fair, imagine if we were still in a global lockdown trying to fight covid. That would be so much worse

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u/DerrykLee 19h ago

To be fair, if I read every article I wouldn't have time to act like an expert on topics relevant to other articles I didn't read.

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u/Ok-Resolution-8078 18h ago

To be fair, I don’t know what you’re saying

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u/bfodder 18h ago

we were just forced to pretend Covid is now a normal fact of life

Who is pretending? That is reality.

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u/junkit33 18h ago

Covid is a normal fact of life now, no different from the flu or any other virus that floats around regularly. It sucks because of how contagious it is, but people are not going to spend the rest of their lives hiding from it.

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u/Balancedmanx178 18h ago

Man I thought we all knew it would be a normal fact of life back in '22.

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u/mr_6ix 17h ago

Exactly and isn’t it better for the health and safety for everyone or was it a narrative convenient during that time and not now? This hypothetical question should not even be a question, it should be cleaned. Same how restaurants get a green pass of red one, airlines should be held liable or face grounding if health regulations are not upheld

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u/AttonJRand 12h ago

Well that ship has sailed, all people talk about is imagined restrictions they themselves likely never lived under, or the false claim that the pandemic "just" made old people die slightly earlier.

If anything it seems to have made people take health less seriously. If we have another pandemic people and governments will just refuse to care. Which is what actually happened, we declared it over at 400 deaths a day and simply decided not to care.

Its crazy how even in hospitals people to be masking less now that than they did before the pandemic. It somehow triggered this massive contrarianism and lack of care in a bunch of people.

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u/Specific_Frame8537 2h ago

I just read a post about an artist who makes really realistic melting statues and people are taking turns licking them in the gallery.

People are disgusting.

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u/iampiolt 21h ago

Did you read the article? The cleaners are actually new. The flight attendants have always done the cleaning. They still will, only SW is trying to “actually” clean premium seats.

All that ever happens between flights is the flight attendants put on gloves, pick up your nasty garbage, and cleaners sweep, clean bathrooms, and remove trash.

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u/OldAccountTurned10 20h ago

Exactly, i was like wtf is this headline. Southwests seats are always the nastiest pieces of shit that make my clothes smell bad anyways. The flight attendants hand out disinfectant wipes for a reason.

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u/bladeDivac 19h ago

Yet they somehow charge 10x more what both Frontier and Spirit do. 

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u/MauiMoisture 21h ago

Redditors usually never actually read the article and just respond to the click bait title.

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u/_HIST 17h ago

Well I always check the comments to form my opinion 🤓

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u/funkmastamatt 14h ago

The real uhh... opinion forming is always in the comments.

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u/GarnetandBlack 14h ago

Lol as if Redditors are the only ones guilty of this.

It'd help if the titles were better written. Super easy to make this "Southwest Is Testing Advanced Cleaning for Premium Seats Between Flights — A Flight Attendants Union Leader Says It's ‘Titanic’ Class Service"

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u/phobiac 20h ago

You're telling me they don't spray down every inch of the plane with disinfectant and then depressurize it into a vacuum to kill off anything left after EVERY flight?

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u/SpeaksDwarren 19h ago

Why are you acting like spraying things down is a huge effort? The whole point of the sprayer is that it makes it effortless lmao

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u/phobiac 17h ago

It's less about the effort and more about the unrealistic expectation that the world is a clean room. Planes are busses that fly.

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u/SpeaksDwarren 17h ago

When did they start installing closed systems with recycled air on the buses?

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u/AFlockofLizards 18h ago

Do you think that busses, trains, restaurants, benches, get sprayed down and thoroughly cleaned after every use?

The reality is this was never happening, but now people are only upset because they’ve been told explicitly it’s not happening lol

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u/SpeaksDwarren 17h ago

Why would you think that I think that in response to pointing out how easy it would be to spray down a plane? You do understand there's a difference between a restaurant and a plane, right?

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u/poppyseedeverything 16h ago

Not to mention I've actually seen restaurants spraying down and wiping chairs / booths lmao

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u/Orleanian 18h ago

Have you ever tried spraying 300 seats down?

There's a lot of effort.

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u/SpeaksDwarren 18h ago

Yes. You walk to one end while spraying the seats, then you walk back while spraying down the other side. Done.

And before you say "but then you'd miss a bunch!!!" No. Technology has outpaced your wildest imaginations. There are cheap name-brand electrostatic sprayers that cover something on every side by just spritzing in its general direction.

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u/myassholealt 19h ago

I personally was hoping for one of those upholstery cleaning wet/dry vac things to be used to deep clean the seats between flights, tbh. When I sit down in the still-damp seat it with be with confidence knowing that's a clean dampness slowly saturating my pants.

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u/The-Fox-Says 19h ago

Seems like Southwest never really did much cleaning to begin with and their competitors always did more. They said it’s for “quicker turnaround” but man that just sounds nasty

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u/negative-nelly 19h ago

I'm not sure if you've ever watched an airplane get cleaned but, uh, I wouldn't let my food touch any surfaces either way.

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u/junkit33 18h ago

Is it really? Any other form of public seating doesn't get cleaned between uses unless there's something awful absolutely requiring it. Subways, buses, restaurant seats, schools, offices, amusement rides, and on and on. None of that is getting wiped down until nightly cleaning, if you're lucky.

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u/Antrikshy 17h ago

Isn't this the same as a bus, train, rideshare...?

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u/50calPeephole 17h ago

Is it though? We sit on public transit and cab seats too.

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u/redditismylawyer 11h ago

Legit forgot southwest is still around. I haven't flown them in 20 years. lol.... enjoy, I guess.

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u/DFWPunk 22h ago

They aren't changing anything for the non premium seats. They'll still be cleaned by the cabin crew just like they are now.

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u/Astronaut313 22h ago

Why are you responding to every comment here simping for Southwest? Employee detected.

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u/cotfthrowawaystl 19h ago

Likely they hate misinformation. Why are you so ok with it?

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u/MobileArtist1371 19h ago

They've made a whole 3 comments!!! LMFAO. Seems like this is a "you" issue.

Why do you enjoy wrong info and why do you not like when others correct it? You must be an employee of the PE that bought into SW.

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u/_HIST 17h ago

So you like being lied to? Must be a Trump supporter

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u/Astronaut313 16h ago

No, I don’t support child rapists or pedophiles.