Airlines With the Most Hygiene Complaints (2026 Data)

A seat that is still wet with urine, a full cabin and no other seat to move to: the story of a passenger flying like that has been told, almost word for word, for years. On a flight from the UK to Cape Town that was understood to be completely full, a traveler found his economy seat damp with urine; the stewardess agreed it was urine and brought him wipes.¹ To see how often hygiene really comes up, we scanned 32,567² airline reviews for terms about soiled seats, dirty cabins, toilets, smells, pests and spoiled food, and compared the airlines with the most hygiene complaints, first among airlines serving the UK and then in the U.S.

The short answer is that hygiene is a small share of what passengers complain about, roughly 1 in 63² reviews of 11 airlines serving the UK, and the samples are too small to put the airlines in a firm order.³ Two long-haul carriers and British Airways have the highest rates, toilets are behind more than a third of the complaints, and official water tests on U.S. aircraft found coliform bacteria far more often in lavatory taps than in galley taps.⁴ Reviews are written by the people who choose to write them, so these numbers measure complaints, not how clean a plane actually is.

Which airlines serving the UK get the most hygiene complaints?

We took the most recent English-language reviews of 11 airlines serving the UK, up to 500 per airline, published from January 2023 to November 2026, 5,101² reviews in all. They come from reviewers in every country; 62.1%² were written by reviewers based in the UK. Each review was checked against a list of hygiene terms in six groups, and the count was weighted so that every airline's mix of one- to five-star reviews matches the mix on its review page.³

Higher, middle and lower groups

Three airlines form the higher group: Qatar Airways at 39.6² hygiene complaints per 1,000 reviews (95% range 21.8 to 71.0), British Airways at 27.3² and Emirates at 21.0².⁵ Virgin Atlantic (17.4²), Aer Lingus (15.3²), Wizz Air (12.2²) and Ryanair (11.0²) sit in the middle.⁶ The lower group is Loganair (9.9²), easyJet (9.4²), KLM (7.0²) and Jet2 (2.1², range 0.2 to 23.4).⁷

The groups are a description of this sample, not a league table. With at most 500 reviews, each airline is compared on only 3² to 20² hygiene complaints, so the ranges overlap widely: Qatar Airways' range reaches down to 21.8 and Jet2's up to 23.4. The order within each group, and even between neighboring groups, is not reliable. The reviewers also differ: 92.4%² of Jet2's sampled reviews come from UK-based reviewers, against 39.4%² for Qatar Airways and 32.6%² for KLM. The window differs too: the latest 500 reviews of Jet2 and easyJet were all written between September and November 2026, while Loganair and Virgin Atlantic needed the whole of 2023 to 2026 to reach their totals.⁸

What the complaints are about

General dirt on seats, tray tables, floors and cabins is the most common complaint.¹³ It appears in 42.4%² of the reviews of 11 airlines serving the UK that raise hygiene at all, dirty or blocked toilets in 36.7%², smells in 22.6%², and bodily fluids such as urine, vomit or feces in 19.5%². Food hygiene, from stale or moldy food to food poisoning, comes up in 17.3%², and pests in 2.9%². Dirt described next to a toilet counts only as a toilet complaint, and because one review can name several problems, the shares add up to more than 100%.

The airline-by-airline split shows different problems at the top. Toilets lead at Qatar Airways, 18.8² per 1,000 reviews, and at British Airways, 13.4², while Emirates' largest category is food hygiene at 7.0².⁵ Complaints about dirty airplane seats, trays and cabins are the largest category at 7² of the 11² airlines, including Ryanair, Wizz Air and easyJet.

Urine, vomit and soiled seats

The complaint that goes viral is the rarest one. Across 12,214² recent reviews of airlines serving the UK and of U.S. airlines, 13² mentioned urine on a seat, floor or toilet, 9² vomit and 6² feces, and only nine described a seat itself as wet, stained or soaked with a bodily fluid. That is about one review in a thousand, yet each of them reads the same way: a soiled place, no cleaning, nowhere to move.

The quotes are short and specific. "It stank of old stale urine," a British Airways passenger wrote in October 2026; "the toilet floor was covered in urine and the stench was disgusting," wrote a Loganair passenger in August 2026.³¹² A United reviewer wrote in July 2025 that "the toilet seat was covered in urine".¹⁵

What happens next in the reported cases depends mostly on whether a free seat exists. On the UK to Cape Town flight, the passenger covered the seat with a plastic bag and a blanket; the airline first offered 5,000¹ frequent-flyer points and then, reportedly, a flight voucher, and said it cleans its aircraft thoroughly after every flight.¹ On a full United flight from San Francisco to Tokyo in June 2026, a business-class passenger found a blanket with what looked like feces on it and stayed in the seat because every seat was taken.²⁴ On a British Airways flight to Boston in 2018, a mother said her daughter's seat was soiled with urine; the airline said the smell came from a carpet stain and that the passenger was moved.²⁵ Objecting has its own risk: two Air Canada passengers who refused vomit-soiled seats in 2023 were removed from the aircraft, and the airline later apologized.²⁶

So how common is urine on a plane seat? In the reviews, rare enough that no airline in the samples collects more than 4² reviews about bodily fluids; in the news, common enough that a near-identical story surfaces every few years, as the four cases in the table show, from a 2017 flight to Cape Town to a 2026 flight to Tokyo.¹²⁴

Pests and bed bugs

Pests are the smallest category, 0.5² reviews per 1,000 for airlines serving the UK and 0.4² per 1,000 in the U.S. archive. The cases that do appear are vivid: two of them are reviews of bed bugs on planes, one from a British Airways passenger in October 2026 who wrote of being "bitten all over my body", and one headed "bed bug bites in business class" on Emirates in October 2025.³¹³ Two reviews do not make a trend, and neither airline's rate is driven by them.

Which U.S. airlines get the most hygiene complaints?

For U.S. carriers we used 5,364² reviews of 13 airlines written from January 2023 to December 2025, taken from an archived third-party copy of a review site that has since closed and deleted its reviews.²⁷ Here 19.2² reviews per 1,000 mention hygiene, about 1 in 52².

Among the 11 airlines with at least 100 reviews, Alaska Airlines had the highest rate, 69.0² per 1,000, but that is 8² of 116² reviews, with a 95% range of 35.4 to 130.3; in the second U.S. sample below it is second-lowest of seven at 9.4².²³ Allegiant Air (36.6², 6 of 164 reviews) also sits in the higher group. The middle group is Delta (29.8²), United (25.1²), JetBlue (23.9²) and American (20.4²); the lower group is Spirit (15.4²), Avelo (13.3²), Southwest (13.0²), Frontier (8.1²) and Breeze (2.8²). Results for low-cost carriers are mixed, with Allegiant high and Spirit and Frontier low, and the ranges of neighboring airlines overlap.

Behind each airline's rate sits a different mix of problems, and the table below splits the U.S. rates into the six groups.²³ General dirt is the largest group at most airlines, led by Alaska at 60.3² per 1,000, while Allegiant's complaints are split evenly between dirt, toilets and smells at 12.2² each.

The category mix leans even more toward visible dirt than for airlines serving the UK. In the U.S. reviews, general dirt appears in 67.0%² of hygiene complaints, toilets in 19.4%² and smells in 12.6%², while bodily fluids are named in only 4.9%².

A second, more recent sample gives a different order at lower rates. In 1,749² reviews of eight U.S. airlines published from 2023 to November 2026 on an open review site, the weighted rate was 12.3² per 1,000; Frontier was highest at 16.5² and Southwest lowest at 4.4².²⁰ With only one to four hygiene reviews per airline, neither sample's order is firm.

Put side by side, the three samples rank the problems in the same order: general dirt first, toilets second and smells third.²

Is airline hygiene getting worse?

Not in the long U.S. record. From 2016 to 2025 the share of U.S. airline reviews mentioning hygiene moved within a narrow band, from 23.3² per 1,000 in 2017 to a low of 15.7² in 2020, when few people flew, and 21.5² in 2025.²³ Our straight-line trend points slightly down, but the yearly values barely move, so it is a description, not a forecast.

Inside that band the categories behave differently. General dirt stayed the largest group every year, between 11.6² and 18.4² per 1,000, and toilets stayed second in most years.²³ Smells fell from 5.6² per 1,000 in 2016 to none in 2025, a year with only 652² reviews.

The newest reviews show no clear trend either. For 11 airlines serving the UK the weighted rate was 9.3² per 1,000 in 2023, 9.9² in 2024, 20.7² in 2025 and 16.1² in 2026 so far, but 3,465² of the 5,101² reviews were written in 2026, so the earlier years rest on a few hundred reviews each and the projection on the chart only extends a four-point line. For the U.S. airlines on the same site the yearly rates were 20.6², 14.9², 6.1² and 12.6², from as few as 68² reviews in 2023.

Who complains about hygiene, and how angry are they?

Price does not buy a clean seat in these reviews, though the premium samples are small. U.S. first-class reviews mentioned hygiene 49.3² times per 1,000 (10² of 203² reviews, 95% range 27.0 to 88.3) and business-class reviews 30.5² (5 of 164), against 17.5² in economy.²³ A first-class review was 2.82² times as likely to raise hygiene as an economy one in this sample; the reviews do not say why, and the first-class range is wide.

By type of trip, business travelers had the highest rate in this sample, 23.1² per 1,000 (17² of 737² reviews), and solo leisure travelers the lowest at 16.1².²³ Families sat in between at 18.6².

Hygiene and star ratings

A hygiene complaint usually comes with a low score. On the open review site, reviews of 11 airlines serving the UK that mention hygiene averaged 1.36² stars out of 5, against 2.02² for the rest, and 80.5%² of them gave a single star. Among U.S. airlines the figures were 1.09² and 1.51² stars. The U.S. archive is the exception: there, hygiene reviews scored 2.8² out of 10, slightly above the 2.76² of other reviews, and fewer gave the lowest marks.²³ Neither review site publishes airline cleanliness ratings; the archive's nearest score, seat comfort, averaged 1.62² out of 5 for hygiene reviews and 2.00² for the rest, which says more about how unhappy these reviewers were than about the seats' cleanliness.

The share of reviews giving the very lowest mark shows the same split between the samples.²

Hygiene is most often the topic of the in-between reviews. Two-star reviews of 11 airlines serving the UK mentioned it 34.1² times per 1,000 and three-star reviews 36.8², against 18.4² for one-star reviews and 2.0² for five-star reviews. A two-star review was 17.05² times as likely to mention hygiene as a five-star one.

Where reviewers live makes little difference for the 11 airlines serving the UK: reviewers based in the UK raised hygiene 15.9² times per 1,000 and reviewers elsewhere 15.7². Across all 6,850² reviews of the 19 airlines, the rate for UK-based reviewers was 15.4² and for U.S.-based reviewers 11.6².

Where the flights started

Reviews of U.S. airlines often name the route, which lets us place the flight by its first airport. Over 2016 to 2025, flights that started in Hawaii had the highest share of hygiene complaints in this sample, 32.4² per 1,000 reviews (12² of 370²), followed by Tennessee at 32.2²; Florida, the state with the most reviewed departures, was at 21.5².²³ The state is where the trip began, not where the aircraft was cleaned, so the map shows where complaining passengers boarded, nothing more.

Airplane water quality: the official test results

Reviews describe what passengers see and smell; the U.S. aircraft drinking-water tests measure what they cannot see. Since October 2011, U.S. airlines whose aircraft board drinking water must test it for coliform bacteria; the rule covers water for drinking, hand washing, tooth brushing and food preparation.²⁸ In 56,063⁴ routine sampling rounds from 2012 to 2020, 4,508⁴ found total coliform in at least one sample, 8.04%² or about 1 in 12², and 172⁴ found E. coli, 0.307%². The file runs from late 2011 to mid-2021 although the federal release is titled 2012-2019; we use the complete years 2012 to 2020.

The lavatory tap is the weak point. Lavatory taps tested positive for coliform in 7.46%² of samples and galley taps in 1.09%², so a lavatory sample was 6.84² times as likely to fail; E. coli turned up in 0.284%² of lavatory samples.⁴ Tap water and dirty toilets are different problems, and reviews and water samples cannot be joined flight by flight, but both put the lavatory at the center.

By airline, the results split into two groups. Three regional carriers had the highest failure rates: SkyWest 24.04%² of sampling rounds, Endeavor Air 23.84%² and ExpressJet 23.26%², nearly 1 in 4².⁴ The results are filed under the airline that operates the aircraft, so flights a regional carrier operates for a larger airline count under the regional carrier's name. Among mainline airlines, American Airlines had 8.54%², JetBlue 6.99%² and Spirit 6.43%², while Delta (2.93%²), United (3.03%²) and Southwest (2.33%²) were among the lowest.

The trend is clearly better. The share of failed rounds fell from 11.59%² in 2012 to 3.91%² in 2020, 7.68² percentage points lower, with small rises only in 2016 and 2018.⁴ A straight line through those years reaches zero within a few years, which no real system does, so the projection is only a picture of the pace of decline; the bulk file has no complete year after 2020.

Where hygiene complaints go in official statistics

In the UK, a passenger who cannot settle a complaint with the airline can take it to an approved dispute body or to the regulator's own complaints team, and the regulator publishes the numbers by airline.²⁹ There is no category for hygiene: complaints are sorted into delays and cancellations, disability assistance, and everything else.²⁹ In the year from April 2025 to March 2026, that "everything else" group held 3,195² of 51,691² complaints, 6.2%². A soiled seat ends up there, next to lost bags and rude staff, and cannot be counted on its own.

British Airways stands out in the "others" column: 1,022²⁹ of its 7,349²⁹ escalated complaints, 13.9%², were about something other than delays or disability assistance, the highest share among the airlines in the table.²⁹ That column mixes every kind of complaint, so it is a ceiling for hygiene, not a count of it.

How we counted hygiene complaints

Every review figure above comes from the same method, and its limits shape what the airplane hygiene statistics on this page can say. A review counts as a hygiene complaint when it contains at least one term from six groups, such as "filthy", "stained", "urine", "stench" or "cockroach", unless a negation stands just before it ("not dirty") or the context is a hotel, airport, lounge or suitcase.² We checked 120² random matches (matched terms, not whole reviews) by hand with the final rules: 104² were real hygiene complaints, a precision of 86.7%². Of the 16² errors, 6² were figures of speech or other meanings ("this airline stinks", "littered with incompetence"), three each were about a passenger who was ill, about access to the toilet rather than its state, and about a hotel, luggage or exhaust smell, and one was a matching error.

The errors in the final check fall into five kinds, which the next table counts.²

The samples themselves differ in size, period and source, so each figure on this page names the sample it uses.²

Three more limits apply. The method misses complaints that use words outside the list, so the rates are a floor. The review samples are not random: people write when something went wrong, and the open-site sample was collected in slices by star rating, which we corrected by weighting to each airline's star mix over all its reviews, not only those of 2023 to 2026.² And the site that published the U.S. archive closed in 2026, saying it had seen a growing number of fake reviews, so the archive cannot be checked against the original pages.²⁷

What it means for passengers

For a traveler the numbers point to a few practical facts. A hygiene problem is unlikely on any single flight: even the airline with the highest rate among those serving the UK drew about 1 in 25² reviews on the subject. The problem a passenger is most likely to meet is general dirt on a seat, tray or floor, and the place most likely to be unpleasant is the lavatory, where both the reviews and the water tests point.⁴ A soiled seat on a full flight leaves the crew few options, as the cases above show, and a complaint with photos is the only record you will have, since no official statistic counts it.²⁹

Conclusions

1. The highest rates belong mostly to long-haul carriers, but no airline is a clear worst. Qatar Airways (39.6), British Airways (27.3) and Emirates (21.0) had the highest rates among 11 airlines serving the UK, yet their 95% ranges overlap with most of the others.²
2. Premium cabins draw at least as many hygiene complaints as economy. U.S. first-class reviews mentioned hygiene 49.3 times per 1,000, against 17.5 in economy, though from only 10 of 203 reviews.²³
3. The lavatory is the weak point in both kinds of data. Toilets feature in 36.7% of hygiene complaints about airlines serving the UK, and U.S. lavatory tap water failed coliform tests in 7.46% of samples against 1.09% for galley taps.²⁴
4. The viral case is rare in the data but recurs in the news. Urine appeared in 13 of 12,214 recent reviews, yet reports of passengers stuck on or beside soiled seats run from 2017 to 2026.²¹²⁴
5. No official count exists. UK complaint statistics file hygiene under 'others', 6.2% of escalated complaints in 2025-2026, so reviews are the only large-scale measure available.²⁹