My last flight to Rome landed at stupid o’clock in the morning so I was almost looking forward to getting a cup of hot coffee from the flight crew. Instead, I opted for holding my eyelids up with two fingers so I could find the first coffee shop in the airport. Coffee always tastes terrible on planes and there could be a simple — and disgusting — reason why.
A couple of weeks ago, an assortment of airline employees spilled some of their industry’s secrets in an Ask Reddit thread, and two of them had some unpleasant things to say about the coffee-makers. A user named Muddbutt7 wrote:
“Sometimes, the vehicle that fills the potable water for washing hands and making coffee is parked next to the vehicle that in used to dump the [toilets] and fill the blue juice for the lavatories. They’re not supposed to. Sometimes, they parked at a distance from each other, which is policy, yet the guy who is filling the water is using gloves that he hasn’t in over 2 years. ”
While a second user named Worseto added:
“The coffee is absolutely disgusting because no one washes the container that goes out every morning. The station agents who get paid way too little don’t give a [expletive] about cleaning it. I certainly didn’t when I worked for AA. Also, because we weren’t given the proper supplies to clean it. We pretty much just rinsed it out and dumped coffee into it. ‘‘
After reading those sort of stomach-churning confessions, Huffington Post attempted to determine how true those statements are. Abbie Unger, a former flight attendant, told the site:
“It is true that the portable water tanks are not cleaned. But they are only filled with potable (drinkable) water, so it’s not like there is old coffee in a big container somewhere. The water doesn’t make for an excellent cup of coffee, but it’s not unsafe.”
So basically, the reason that cup of Starbucks during your Delta flight tastes worse than the cup you had at the airport is because of the water, which is a point that has been raised previously. The Environmental Protection Agency began investigating the safety of the water on airplanes in 2004, after discovering that 15%—or 1. 5 out of every 10 planes—tested positive for coliform bacteria in the drinking water.
In 2013, NBC 5 looked into whether those numbers had improved and discovered that 12% of planes had at least one positive test for coliform in what was then the EPA’s most recent survey. Although the EPA said that there had not been any cases of anyone getting sick from the water onboard a plane, insiders still say that the tanks—and the hoses that are used to fill them—can be pretty gross (“pretty gross” is a highly scientific term).
In a Forbes piece called “Why Airline Crews Skip the Coffee and Tea On Board”, former US Air employee John Goglia wrote:
“Thirty years ago when I was working for US Air, we began a process to bleach the water tanks that hold the water and flush out the system. This was done on a regular basis. Yet, it was clear to anyone working on these tanks and their hoses that a lot of sediment was accumulating in the system, sediment that was akin to pond scum. Even after the tanks were bleached and flushed, some sediment always remained.”
Of course, there could be other reasons why the coffee tastes so unpleasant. Cornell University scientists believe that the loud, inescapable sound of cabin noise can affect the way we both perceive and taste foods during flight. Either way, we might just stick with coffee served at ground level from now on.
1.What attitudes did the author have towards the coffee on planes according to the passage?
2.（ ）is basically the cause of the terrible coffee taste on planes.
3.According to the context, what possibly is the Chinese meaning of the word “coliform” in Paragraph 9?
4.Which of the following is INCORRECT according to US Air employee John Goglia?
