Is It Safe to Eat and Drink On a Plane?

By Robert McGarvey

It was just seven or eight months ago that most air carriers dramatically reduced – often they eliminated – food and beverage service inflight and yet here we now are where the question for the moment is, is it safe to eat and drink on a plane? The related question: is it safe for me as a passenger if those around me eat and drink even if I don’t? A third question: is it safe for me to have flight attendants serving food and beverage and moving down the aisle?

The questions have come into focus for two reasons.  The first: many experts now are predicting a sharp rise in Thanksgiving travel – that’s just two weeks away.  A good response is to shudder in fear. But it nonetheless is the current forecast despite the facts that now every day sees 100,000+ new cases and just about every state shows rising rates and some show surging rates. Put more people in planes and airports and an unavoidable consequence is that there will be spiking Covid-19 cases. Yes, most surveys say drive traffic will be the main transportation mode at Thanksgiving (as it usually is) but many in aviation are predicting a bullish Thanksgiving weekend.

The second reason:  More carriers have resumed inflight food and beverage service.  For instance, on American Airlines flights between 900 and 2199 miles, “All passengers are provided a bag with a packaged snack, a bottle of water and hand sanitizer during boarding (not available on American Eagle flights),” reported The Points Guy.

Many carriers have done likewise. Some are resuming sales of wine and beer. We aren’t back to the old “normal,” but airlines are creeping in that direction.

Let me picture this. I am jammed in the middle seat in coach and to my right and also my left passengers remove their face masks and begin to chomp and slurp.

Why don’t I like that picture?

An oft quoted study out of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health noted that on the carriers that mandate mask wearing (all leading US carriers included: “The only time a passenger onboard is permitted to remove their mask briefly is while eating and/or drinking. Most airlines have limited the beverage and snack service on board, and/or have suspended it altogether on shorter flights, and/or suspended offering food for purchase. Some airlines only offer or sell bottled water or have available a pre-sealed snack bag for customers, which can be self-served or provided upon request. One airline has straws available upon request.”

The Harvard scientists seem okay with that but, remember, the study had significant support from Airlines For America, an industry lobbying group.  At least some critics have rejected the study’s validity on that basis.  

But now we are talking about resuming actual in-cabin service and that is a wholly new problem.  

A recent Washington Post “By the Way” story quoted “the associate dean of public health sciences at the University of California at Davis, Bradley Pollock, who said he would be more comfortable flying if airlines continued to minimize their flight attendants’ cabin movement. ‘I would not be happy if a flight attendant physically reaches over me to serve a window seat customer their drink,’ Pollock says. ‘I’d also like my row mates to keep their masks on as much as possible.’”

Infectious disease specialist at the Univ. of Alabama David Freedman told Wapo that in addition to seeing limits on crew movement, which may be linked to virus spread, “I would like to see mask off [time] limited to 10 minutes at a time, and not allowed simultaneously by adjacent passengers.”

That is the question.  Can you envision making a deal with adjacent seatmates where you divvy up flight times and mask free moments for eating and drinking?

In a perfect world, yes.

But not in this world.

In this world I live in a highrise with small elevators that can safely accommodate no more than two masked passengers at a time – and yet often several people, some unmasked, barge in when I am aboard.  I of course get off, abruptly but silently.  What would be the point of complaining about their selfish insensitivity?  And I take the steps down to the street.

Good exercise indeed and I forget my grumbles.

I couldn’t do that on a plane.

Personally, what I would do inflight is simply not eat. The food sucks (even in business class) so no big loss.

I also plan not to drink, not even on x-country flights, if only to let me avoid using the lavatories (and I have zero trust in them in the Covid-19 era).  

If we all did that, flying would be a better, safer thing. Especially if we all wore masks throughout our flights and airport minutes.

I do know I will feel more comfortable if my seatmates joined me in not eating and drinking and always wearing a mask inflight.

Will they?

Many of us are about to find out.