DRINKING water on board planes is important, but it gets people worked up.
Some people say you shouldn’t drink the water that we provide because apparently it is horrendously unhealthy, which to be honest, is total nonsense.
I’ve been working as a flight attendant with a top airline for the last ten years and in this week’s blog for Sun Online Travel, I’m going to tell the truth about the water on board planes.
I see plenty of other flight attendants on Tiktok talking about the water we have on our aircraft as if it’s been scooped up from a pond or something, which isn’t really the case at all.
Yes, it’s stored in a tank that isn’t cleaned out as often as perhaps you’d expect, that much is true, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t completely safe.
I know people who have been flying for over 50 years who’ve been drinking the hot water the whole time and never had any problems whatsoever.
But for some reason, people freak out and think it’s really grim because they saw a little video online.
If you fancy a cup of tea, don’t be put off – there’s nothing in that tank that is any worse than a bit of limescale build up in your kettle.
And for those who want cold drinks, we’ve got lots of bottled water on the plane, so don’t worry about that either.
I would always advise passengers to look at flight attendants’ behaviour for guidance if they don’t know how to react to something, be it turbulence, a pilot’s announcement, or in this case the hot water.
You’ll notice that we are mostly happy to drink it in the tea and coffee that we need to be perky for a long haul flight, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be too.
I’ve been doing this job for almost 10 years and there’s never been any outbreaks of illness among the teams I’ve flown with, so honestly, just don’t think about it and enjoy your drinks.
In fact, we’d also recommend you use the water for more than just having a brew.
We love a good self caterer on board and we’re more than happy to fill up pot noodles or any other just-add-water type snacks if you bring them on board.
A lot of staff tend to bring them too because they’re cheap lunches that are simple to make and generally a bit tastier than other options.
For some of our Far Eastern flights we have cup noodles loaded on board and that’s pretty much all we do on the flight, just fill them up and pass them out.
There’ve been times when I’ve spent as much as six hours in the air just filling up noodle cups on repeat.
It makes the meal service really easy and, as far as I’m aware, there’s never been any mass passenger illnesses due to the water we use.
So take flight attendants on Tiktok with a pinch of salt because a lot of them will be telling passengers not to drink the hot water, while sipping a coffee during all their in-flight breaks.
Meanwhile, this flight attendant revealed what you should eat to stay nourished on board planes.
And this man was filmed eating a really strange snack during a flight.
