The New York Times reported the other day on the cleanliness of airplanes, focusing on Delta.
Delta had let its schedule for deep cleaning its aircraft go to every 15 to 18 months. Essentially, planes are used as many hours of the day as are practical, which means thousands of hours in flight. In a normal cleaning in between flights, someone will go through the plane looking for trash and disposing of it. Often, to save money, this is done by the flight attendants before they move on to their next assignment or leave for the day.
The industry standard for deep cleaning is thirty days. Deep cleaning involves brushing, scrubbing, and vacuuming…essentially much more than a quick cleaning crew or a group of flight staff can do. Delta has fortunately returned to this after discovering how shabby their planes were becoming. Two cleaning contractors were fired and a crew of auditors reviews the performance of the remaining ones to ensure consistency.
Including snacks brought onboard, fast food from airport food courts, etc…airplanes can get filled with garbage, crumbs, etc…and a quick cleaning for the obvious cannot always prevent someone from sticking their hand in the magazine pocket and discovering something missed. At least the deep cleaning means every thirty days, the seat cushions are removed, everything is wiped, every pocket is checked, and the lavatory gets a through cleaning.
Now…if they could only clean the TSA checkpoints where we have to remove our shoes…