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More than a fifth (21%) of airline cabin crew “indulged in sexual relations with a colleague during a flight,” a new poll reveals.
A further 14% said they had had in-flight sexual encounters with passengers, the survey by price comparison site Jetcost.co.uk found.
The study covering 718 British air stewards aged 18 and over who are currently in the job or have been in the past five years found that 89% said they had broken airline rules during a flight.
The most common “crime” was lying about the availability of products in the in-flight shopping catalogue, presumably because of laziness (28%), while one in five had short-changed passengers.
Asked how much they thought they had pocketed from short-changing passengers per month, the answers averaged out at £331 per year.
More than half (54%) said they had given change in a different currency to hoodwink passengers, while 40% said they had got away with it simply because “most passengers don’t check their change”.
However, German crews were found to be even more dishonest.
The company asked cabin crews from Germany, Spain, France and Italy whether they had short-changed passengers, and 29% of Germans said they had, with the average fraud coming in at £410 per year.
The UK was second-worst, followed by Spain (24% of crew stealing £121 per year), France (19% and £90) and Italy (18% and £75).
A further 7% of cabin crew said they had accepted tips and gifts from passengers, which is against company rules for their airlines.
Antoine Michelat, co-founder of Jetcost.co.uk, told the Daily Telegraph: “It’s completely unacceptable for cabin crew to be short-changing passengers; they’re knowingly pocketing the money that should be going back to the customer and are therefore stealing.
“Just under £30 a month may not sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but that’s over £300 per year – and if the results of this survey are anything to go by then cabin crew in Germany are stealing even more.
“They may think it’s OK by passing it off as the odd 20p here and 50p there, but that’s still money that’s not rightfully yours and belongs to someone else.”