Coathanger

Does anyone know how often they actually clean the cabin on the A380?

I was on QF12 on 29th December and noticed the seat and bathroom were a little dusty. Not quite what you'd expect in First on a flagship route:

m0hamed

The aircraft is cleaned before each sector. Dust on the seat reflects the contractor at LAX.

That said that vent needs some serious attention.

edy4eva

Seems little if has changed since flying QF in '12/13/14 DXB<->SYD. The toilet seat cover was filthy on each and every flight (all different A/C regos), the seat base was filthy like they have never been cleaned. Even the wall area behind the door. Ugh.

I don't think these areas are attended by the cleaning crew, instead they focus their effort on: mirror, benchtop/sink, seat (lid/base ignored).

og

You'll never see the space behind the toilet door cleaned given that the cleaners will always leave the door open when doing their work.

edy4eva

During my college years I took on many jobs, one of them cleaning the interior of coaches at 3AM. The turnaround was crazy - a dozen of buses within 2 hours. I realised that in order to do a decent cleaning 10 minutes per bus was no were near enough (factor in collecting rubbish from all seat pockets, vacuuming carpet/seats, wiping toilet seat)- the shift supervisor demonstrated how quickly he can do it but honestly it was a horrid result that he deemed satisfactory.

There is little difference between cleaning road coaches and flying-coaches. Cleaning crew goes in and out within 10-15 minutes and most of the time no thorough job is done. No cleaner has the time to attend to any extra cleaning chore inside this blitz.

QF needs to address this, especially for their premium cabins where a passenger dropping 10k+ dollars expects and -should experience clean facilities.

CodeAdam10

I have seen how much pressure (and lack of time) the cleaning crews are under on shows like 'Ultimate Airport Dubai' ... there is no way a thorough cleaning can be accomplished. It's more of a 'touch-up' service until the plane is due for an actual time-out period with a detailed cleaning.

sxc

I've found on my recent QF trips (once on A380 and a A330), there seems to be a persistent urine smell in the toilets, even at the beginning of the flight. I haven't found this a problem on CX.

number_6

CX requires flight attendants to clean the F toilet after every usage which is one way to overcome lazy ground cleaning operations. EK has 2 shower attendants on every A380 who have cleaning the shower as their sole duty. Part of where the high F fare goes

Coathanger

It's a shame the cleaning seems to be a recurring issue. I had previously flown in QF F on the A380 in 2011 and the aircraft was spotless so I was very surprised.

Thanks for sharing. In college I worked housekeeping during the holidays for conference guests so can empathise.

And agree that this is really unacceptable for an airline that aspires to be one of the greats.

Let's be clear that I don't have an issue with the cleaners personally, having been in that situation (and jobs at supermarkets and department stores). But if the outcome is a consistently dirty cabin then something in the process needs to change (time, scope etc).

Yuck. Thankfully this was not an issue for this particular flight in either of the F lavatories.

I think SQ and JL have a similar policy. It's telling when the Y cabin and lavatories on SQ are cleaner than F on Qantas.

Coathanger

For those wondering, I did write in to Qantas to let them know and received the below by way of response.

og

I too did a cleaning job in student years. One particular department store manager thought us cleaners were not doing a good enough job. I realised this guy was leaving coloured "TicTacs" in odd places - as a test to see if they disappeared as an indicator that we were vacuuming everything. Sadly (for the store manager), we only looked for these coloured TicTac things and vacuumed them - and not much else.

vbroucek

Sadly, this is not QF specific. I have seen similar in business class lavatories on SQ, TG, LH and LX. In particular the vents seem always to be full of dust.

Daniel-SYD

I've noticed this more on QF, as I've been trying them as an alternative to United and others. On Sunday on qf11 in biz I noticed a lot of dust on top of the seats - the pod part, especially towards the Windows.

I see the point of them not really cleaning where they can't see like behind open doors. It looked like a serious layer of dust so it's been there a while...

Crumbs in the seat storage parts, arm rests with crumbs - not wiped down. Broken table. Not that impressed but not really worried either.

Off topic but I'm more pissed they delay my return flight out of lax just to avoid misconnects from jfk. Actually they've delayed three Aussie east coast flights. Maybe they'll make up the time.