With money tight, many planes are filthy

ATLANTA — Seatback pockets hiding sticky surprises, carpets with patterns that can no longer conceal the curious stains, overripe lavatories and crevices oozing snack grit and plain old grime.

Increasingly, that describes the modern airliner, an untidy tube hurtling through the sky full of passengers who cannot wait to land and go wash their hands with disinfectant soap. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but in the airline industry it has taken a back seat to financial survival.

Airlines, which have been paring their fleets to cut costs, are flying their jets fuller than ever — and some of them are just a little too crowded not to smell. After dispensing with the expense of most meal service, airlines invited passengers to bring their own food aboard, and many planes now land littered with a smorgasbord of wrappers and leftovers.

Once on the ground, there are fewer employees to tidy up, thanks to widespread layoffs. And planes, which make money only when they fly, sit at the gate for shorter periods, often making cleanup a rush job.

"You put your hand in the seatback pocket and there's an open McDonald's ketchup container in there," said Joe Brancatelli, a frequent flier who runs an advice Web site for business travelers. Tidiness has declined in recent years, he said. "The problem is they've made so many cuts."

When cleaning is outsourced, for instance, "it's another part of the airline business that goes to the lowest bidder," he said.

And when outside food was invited aboard, routines for taking care of trash went awry. "A lot of inconvenient garbage," Brancatelli said. "The airlines can't control it. They can't plan for it."

Little wonder, then, that Delta Air Lines, regrouping in bankruptcy, noticed earlier this year that it had let its 438 big jets become, in the words of Tim Canavan, director of operations, "dingy and dirty."

While the industry standard for deep-cleaning a jetliner — a process similar to having your car professionally detailed — is roughly every 30 days, Delta had let its schedule lapse to every 15 to 18 months.

Just months after Delta began installing new interiors, including pricey leather seats, Canavan and his staff were surprised to find that some of the planes were already filthy. Thus began a humbling airlinewide effort to become neater. Deep cleaning — brushing, scrubbing and vacuuming — now occurs at least every 30 days on Delta planes, bringing Delta up to par.

"There's still a long ways they have to go," said Linda Hirneise, who heads the travel practice at J.D. Power & Associates, a market-research firm. Her company surveys passengers about airline cleanliness, and this year the top-ranked carrier — JetBlue — received an 8.49 on a 10-point scale.

But in Hirneise's opinion, "anything below a nine is flunking."