Dirty planes and high prices: US workers and passengers expect further misery as air travel rebounds
The world is traveling again. Summer air travel is expected to surpass pre-pandemic levels in 2023, according to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and airline revenues are back to near record levels.
But for airline workers – who suffered the brunt of pandemic shutdowns and then the spike in air rage that followed – unresolved labor issues remain and many are warning that for passengers those issues, which have led to a surge in operational problems, remain and are likely to cause more concerns this holiday season.
Dirty planes are just one of the issues travelers are likely to face, according to Rosa Sanchez, an airplane cabin cleaner for airline contractor Swissport, which provides service for several airlines at Logan airport in Boston. Understaffing and a lack of adequate protective equipment has driven high turnover rates and undermined the effectiveness of her and her co-workers’ ability to properly clean planes, she said. She said they are also constantly rushed and not given enough time to clean the planes.
“Sometimes we don’t have enough supplies to clean, so we just use what we have or just use water. Sometimes we don’t have a mop, so we use the blankets left on airplanes by passengers to clean the floors,” said Sanchez. “Sometimes in the bathroom there will be blood on the floor, toilet, walls, and there is feces and urine on top of the toilet. When I don’t have enough gloves, I’ve had to wrap a blanket around my hand to clean the bathroom.”
She recounted an incident in 2022, when she was poked by a hypodermic needle left on a plane, continued working, and had to pay for medical care out of her own pocket afterwards.
“I was rushing to clean because we didn’t have enough people. I reached in and pulled my hand out of a seat pocket and the needle was sticking out of my finger,” she said. “They don’t value us, even though we value the work that we do for them.”
Sanchez and several workers at Swissport, the largest airport services provider in the US, have filed complaints against the company with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha). Swissport has refuted the claims, saying the company is in full compliance with labor regulations and that “the health and safety of all our employees is the highest priority for Swissport”.
The pandemic fundamentally changed the airline industry, said Gary Peterson, executive director of the office of the international president of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), and a licensed aircraft maintenance technician. While the industry’s economics may have recovered, workers
and passengers are still suffering.
“The industry shifted, and it’s not what it once was. The airline executives, they look at numbers to see how to get in more seats, reducing the distance between seats – all of these things contribute to why there are problems with passengers in the air,” said Peterson. “There is no comfort in flying any more unless you’re in a first-class or business-class seat. If you’re in a coachclass seat, it’s brutal.”
Staffing issues for pilots and licensed mechanics have been exacerbated by lags in training due to Covid, and the use of pandemic bailout funds by airlines to buy out or force the early retirement of senior employees under the assumption there would be a pipeline of replacement workers at lower costs when travel demand rebounded, said Peterson.
But while Covid’s impact has exacerbated the situation, the worsening experience of many workers and passengers has a long history.
Airlines have long been known and criticized for tacking on fees to ticket prices for basics such as checking in luggage or a few extra inches of legroom.
In 2014, Columbia University professor Tim Wu characterized this trend among airlines as “calculated misery”, noting airlines have charged fees for basic services that used to be included with ticket prices and airplane seats have gotten smaller over the years, worsening the experience of air travel for passengers and workers.
Add into that mix the increased concentration and market power of a handful of airlines that now dominate the industry in the wake of deregulation, consolidation that occurred after 9/11, and outsourcing that has further deteriorated air travel service.
The pandemic increased this misery. Consumer complaints against airlines surged more than 300% compared with pre-pandemic levels in April 2022 amid operational issues, flight cancellations and delays roiling the airline industry.
For workers, complaints have revolved around degrading conditions and inadequate staffing and resources to do their jobs.
Peterson noted the airline industry has used staff shortages as an excuse to pursue policies such as pushing to reduce two-person pilot crews to one pilot – which unions have aggressively opposed over safety concerns – and the outsourcing of maintenance to foreign countries with fewer safety standards and regulations.
For flight attendants, the pandemic created staffing and operational issues for the workers that remained in the industry, conditions that have incited recent union organizing and legislative efforts.
Rasaq Adeyemi, a flight attendant at Delta and member of a union organizing committee with the Association of Flight Attendants, claimed the energy around the union campaign has surged in response to conditions and treatment of workers coming out of the pandemic. Delta is the last of the major airlines where flight attendants are currently not unionized.
Delta has claimed its direct relationship with employees is superior to unions. Workers say they need a union for protection against the company’s unilateral decisions, policies and cuts that have affected workers and their working conditions.
“Delta used to be a people-first company, but that’s not the case any more. We’re just numbers to them,” said Adeyemi.
He criticized a recent policy issued by Delta under which the names of flight attendants would be provided to passengers ahead of a flight. The customer recognition tool policy’s rollout was quickly paused after workers called it “unnecessary and frankly creepy” and the company apologized for the stress it had caused.
“There are a lot of harassment concerns around the policy, especially for female flight attendants,” said Adeyemi.
Flight attendants reported a surge in violence and abuse through the Covid pandemic that they say has continued. A union-backed “Assault won’t fly” campaign is pushing for federal legislation to enact and enforce a nofly list for unruly passengers.
A 2021 survey found 84% of flight attendants had dealt with unruly passengers on board and 17% of respondents said they experienced a physical incident.
Cases of disruptive passengers investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration surged in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The number of reported incidents of assault against flight attendants and other airline workers increased from about 1,000 in 2020 to about 6,000 incidents in 2021.
“It has come down a little bit since the mask mandate has gone away but it’s still much, much higher than it was before,” said Thom McDaniel, a flight attendant at Southwest for 31 years and international vice-president with the TWU.
“Sometimes we think it’s a result of the frustrations that people have from being locked up during Covid or frustrations that they have from coming to the airport and finding out that they have extended delays, or whether their flights are canceled because some of the mismanagement that we’re seeing in the industry right now, and the things that haven’t been addressed.”
A series of events led Southwest to suffer an operational meltdown in December, resulting in the cancellation of over 16,700 flights and stranding 2 million passengers. McDaniel’s union is currently in federal mediation over new union contract negotiations for flight attendants at Southwest, which have been ongoing for over four years.
“Flight attendants really expect to see a contract that’s going to not only respect what they’ve been through, but also compensate them for all the time when we’ve seen inflation increased at record rates,” added McDaniel.
He also cited ongoing pushes for legislation to improve working conditions, which range from providing breastfeeding accommodations for flight crews, federal regulations to protect passengers and flight crew members from toxic fumes on airplanes, and reining in the trend of airlines outsourcing aviation maintenance abroad to cut costs.
Workers for airlines and airline contractors, where low-paid workers have been increasingly outsourced in recent decades from being directly employed by airlines, have complained of being overworked and underpaid as staff shortages are still prevalent in many parts of the industry.
Carlos Hernandez, a cargo agent for Swissport, which contracts for United at Dulles airport in Washington, has said understaffing and the pressure to load cargo on to planes on time have resulted in safety issues. He recently hurt his leg on the job when his supervisor, who was operating a forklift, knocked cargo container panels against him.
“They’re rushing us, and you feel terrible, because they’ll yell at you a lot of times. Sometimes they don’t even let you go to the bathroom,” said Hernandez. “I’m still in terrible pain. I can’t walk properly any more. When I step on my foot, I still feel pain in my leg, and I drag it so I don’t walk normally any more.
“I’ve only missed one day of work from the injury. I don’t miss any more days because I’m scared. If I miss a day, they’ll give you a point. They’ll give you points and these points accumulate and if you get too many points that they can fire you and I’ve already been giving a warning that if I get any more points I’m going to get suspended.”
I pulled my hand out of a seat pocket and the needle was sticking out of my finger
Rosa Sanchez
winning formula of the laptop, which is a good thing. The no-fan design keeps things silent while the speedy but efficient M2 chip provides plenty of power and 16-hour battery life. Those looking for gaming or workstation-level power will have to look elsewhere, however.
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logues commonly sold over the internet.
The average, psychedelically curious individual would probably have their anxiety mitigated by knowing the exact ingredients of their bar. For their part, Polkadot (or someone anonymously speaking for them via their Telegram channel) assures me the bars contain “natural shrooms” and not compounds like 4-AcO-DMT, a research chemical that provides a psilocybin-like effect and is sometimes called “synthetic shrooms”.
“Genuine” Polkadot bars include QR codes on the wrapper, which authenticate the product by linking to their official Telegram presence. But this level of authentication may well elude the average consumer who might just want to, well, get a little high and watch the walls melt.
For adults who do this accidentally, the results can vary wildly. On social media, silly videos circulate of people filmed after unwittingly consuming mushroom chocolate. Wide smiles, bugged eyes, and those “fits of immoderate laughter” described by Dr Edward Brande back in 1799 abound. “I have never been so fascinated by trees,” on TikToker enthuses.Other experiences are more intense. One Redditor describes watching their husband after he accidentally ate some mushroom chocolate. “He started with the giggles,” the Redditor says, “but sounds like past family issues are starting to come up and he’s having a tough time.” As the anxiety waned, the man saw visions of deceased relatives, which, far from being troubling, “brought him peace to issues he’s struggling with”. Such anecdotal reports chime with more serious clinical research, which has illustrated that even the dreaded “bad trip” can yield positive outcomes, or significant spiritual meaning. Though it’s safe to say that embarking on such a journey unexpectedly – potentially a very intense one, if the accidental user has ingested a huge dose because they thought they were eating regular, delicious chocolate – isn’t the way they do things in the clinic.
The solution, say advocates, who stress that magic mushrooms are generally considered much safer than other drugs, including alcohol, is legal standardisation. “We have to do more education, and more outreach,” says Linda B Rosenthal, a New York state assemblymember who recently introduced a bill to legalise “natural” psychedelics, including magic mushrooms.
If passed, New York’s bill, A114, would revise state drug laws to legalise the “possession, use, cultivation, production, creation, analysis, gifting, exchange, or sharing by or between natural persons of 21 years of age or older of a natural plant or fungus-based hallucinogen.” It follows similar measures in Oregon, Colorado, Washington DC and California, where an ambitious psychedelic decriminalisation bill recently passed the state senate. As Rosenthal explains, when populous states like New York and California pass such bills, “it puts pressure on the federal government to standardise it across the nation. This is a movement that is only gaining strength.”
In the meantime, however, the patchwork approach to psychedelic decriminalisation (and legalisation) only opens up avenues for underground operators. The mere whisper of legalisation may well work to de-prioritise enforcement among certain police disinclined to enforce drug laws to the letter. But as it stands, these kinds of psychedelic confections remain illegal. And despite the best efforts by producers to vouch for their product using QR codes and other verification measures, it can be difficult to accurately gauge dosing, or quality.
When it comes to the “kiddos”, Jimmy Leonard of the Maryland poison center notes that prevention is key. He recently completed a study of accidental ingestion of cannabis edibles and, he says, has “seen way too many cases where people say, ‘Well, normally we keep it up high, locked away, but we had friends over and left some edibles on the kitchen table.’ That’s inappropriate. It’s the same thing with psilocybin. They won’t know and think it’s just a candy bar.” And unlike dried magic mushrooms – which have a natural limiting effect due to their grossness – the risk with edibles, Leonard says, is that children “will plough through the whole candy bar, the whole packet of candy, because they see something delicious”.
If you or someone you know has accidentally ingested something toxic, contact US Poison Control by phone at 1-800-222-1222, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
How do you say to a two-year-old, ‘Yes, you are tasting colours’?
plantation-owning father. ITV’s new adaptation of Tom Jones has also featured people of colour.
“My concern is that everyone now starts putting Black characters into their productions in ways that reflect our current interests, but that undermine the actual history,” says Gretchen Gerzina, historian and author of Britain’s Black Past. “So much so that people believe that this was the actual history. That’s the great danger. It gives people a pass to say, ‘Oh, it was all right. They didn’t suffer and they were wealthy.’”
Alternatives are available. One is the now-widespread practice of colourblind casting, where race is ignored entirely and actors are cast purely on how well they fit the role. This has been done on the stage for decades, particularly with Shakespeare – Anglo-Indian Ben Kingsley played Hamlet in 1975 and Adrian Lester played Henry V in 2003. More recently, the practice has made its way into cinema, as in Armando Iannucci’s 2019 film The Personal History of David Copperfield, where the eponymous character was played by Dev Patel, or Joel Coen’s 2021 The Tragedy of Macbeth with Denzel Washington.
Colour-blind casting is a way of saying: “These characters may not have been Black or brown but who really knows? And who really cares?” All historical drama is a construct made in the here and now, and all pretensions to “accuracy” are at best approximate. Cleopatra did not speak in English, after all, and Georgian Britons often had bad skin and terrible teeth.
The other alternative is to seek out true stories of people of colour who lived in these eras. One example is Amma Asante’s 2013 film Belle – a biopic of Dido Belle, who was born into slavery in the year of George and Charlotte’s marriage, and was raised as an aristocrat in 18th-century London. Another has just hit British cinemas: Chevalier, based on the life of Joseph Bologne, AKA the Chevalier de SaintGeorges, the illegitimate son of a French aristocrat and an enslaved African woman. Bologne’s story seems too extraordinary to be true. Born in 1745 and educated in France, he became a champion fencer, a skilled horse-rider, ice skater, swimmer, dancer, as well as a gifted composer and violinist. US president John Adams declared him “the most accomplished man in Europe”.
In the film’s opening scene, the young Bologne, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr, outclasses Mozart in a violin duel. That probably never happened. But, unlike Bridgerton, Chevalier stays true to the racial realities of 18th-century France. Bologne was given the title Chevalier de Saint-Georges by Louis XV and became a music tutor to Marie Antoinette, but despite his attempts to assimilate, he was never truly accepted. He applied to lead the prestigious Paris Opéra, but some of its star singers said they would never “submit to the orders of a mulatto”.
There is a touch of Bridgertonian romantic intrigue to the film, it must be said, but some artistic licence is understandable, if not essential. Documentation of Bologne’s life is far from complete. In fact, it was actively suppressed: in 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte banned performances of his compositions, and his name was all but erased from musical history until recently.
It is a similar story with many other Black European histories: they were either lost, forgotten or never considered worthy of record. When Gerzina was researching her book 26 years ago, she asked an assistant at a prominent London bookshop if they had Peter Fryer’s Staying Power, a seminal history of Black people in Britain. “She just looked at me and said, ‘Madam, there were no Black people in England before 1945.’” The picture is being filled in, though. Researchers are uncovering ever more about Black British lives, many of which would be worthy of a movie. Nathaniel Wells, for example: born in Saint Kitts to a white father and a Black mother, he inherited his father’s Welsh estate in 1794 and became a magistrate, even as he continued to run slave plantations in the Caribbean.
Rhimes herself has evoked this forgotten history in reference to Bridgerton: “There were so many successful Black composers; lots of rich African people sent their children to England for boarding school,” she said in a recent interview. “Those things existed, and I was amazed to find they did. What I wanted to explore was, what happens if you unerase that erased history?”
“Erasing history” has become a contentious phrase in today’s culture wars. Attempts to bring Black history to light are still being resisted and suppressed. The BBC was recently accused of “rewriting British history to promote a woke agenda” – for example, for making content about histories of enslavement. But when people campaigned against statues associated with Britain’s slave trade, such as that of Edward Colston, which was ceremoniously chucked into Bristol harbour in 2020, critics including Boris Johnson argued that this was “erasing history”. Similar arguments took place over the removal of Confederate statues in the US, even as the American right has been enacting draconian book-banning and syllabus-shaping legislation to inhibit wider knowledge of Black (and brown and queer) histories – erasing history.
But overwriting the actual history with more fanciful versions could also be seen as a form of erasure. At a time when forces are invested in suppressing Black history, shows such as Queen Charlotte could be playing into their hands. “Because we’re primarily a visual culture nowadays,” says Martin, “in terms of information and the stories we tell about ourselves and each other, the phenomenon of Bridgerton means that the template has been set in terms of what the public expects and demands. So a lot of fantastic, ordinary, everyday heroic people will find their stories pushed into the background – in favour of glamour and beautifully dressed lords and ladies.”
• This article was amended on 12 June 2023 to correct a reference to the abolition of slavery. It was the slave trade that was abolished in the British empire in 1807, not slavery itself.
Chevalier is in UK cinemas now.
A drama about 1930s Germany becoming harmonious because Hitler marries a Jewish woman would be laughed out