Sometimes the truth can be hard to hear! Writing on Reddit, an anonymous forum, airport and airline employees have shared a series of revealing secrets about airport life
Here are six of the most shocking truths from these anonymous airline insiders.
1. Locks on zippered suitcases aren’t that effective
According to a Reddit user going under the name of royalsiblings, ““You can pop a zipper with a pen and drag the locked zipper pulls around the bag to close them back up. I’ve done this many times to identify bags that are tagless and locked.”
2. It might be a good idea to bring your own headphones
Reddit user ichigo29 said, “I used to work for warehouse that supplied a certain airline with items. The headsets that are given to you are not new, despite being wrapped up. They are taken off the flight, “cleaned”, and then packaged again.”
3. Make sure you remove old flight tags
Reddit user aurelius said, “Not a secret, just common sense; the reason some bags miss their flight or get misrouted is because passengers don’t remove old tags. It confuses handlers as well as the conveyor belt scanners. I see it happen all the time.”
4. It’s a good idea to be kind to employees
Reddit user ihatcoe said, “The nicer you are to us, the more we can do for you… Your neighbour is noisy? Tell us nicely and we might be able to get you a better seat.”
5. Buy or fly on a Tuesday in the US
Redditor Drama_Llama said, “I work Revenue Management for an airline. On average, the cheapest time to BUY a ticket is Tuesday afternoon. The cheapest time to FLY is Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday. This applies to US flights in my experience.”
6. If you’re travelling with a pet, put its name on the carrier
Redditor RabbitMix said, ““If you checked your dog there’s about a 30 percent chance it’s terrified before it even gets on the plane, who knows how scared it gets during the actual flight. Bag room agents will usually try to comfort a scared animal, but all we can really do is talk to it, so if you write your pet’s name on their carrier it usually helps a lot.”
Images: Getty
This article first appeared on Over60