‘Need a hazmat suit’: Virgin flight attendants are sick of cleaning dirty planes

Virgin Australia flight attendants are demanding the return of dedicated cleaning crews as mess left behind by passengers and gruelling turnaround duties leave staff working up to 10 hours without a break.

According to the Flight Attendants’ Association of Australia (FAAA), cabin conditions have deteriorated to the point where staff practically “need a hazmat suit”.

Virgin Australia crew are required to clean up planes after flights. “The insufficient catering offer onboard leads passengers to bring their own food onboard,” said one Virgin crew member, who asked not to be named. “From chips to lollies and mushed-up fruit in the carpets, the amount of cleaning is increasing.”

Virgin requires the cabin crew to perform deep cleans between journeys, adding strain to their workload. After cleaning planes, the Virgin crew, who have won awards for their quality of service, must then serve food to passengers on subsequent flights.

The FAAA is now pushing to reinstate professional cleaners between flights to relieve overburdened staff and maintain hygiene standards.

“It used to be ‘tidy the cabin, fluff the cushions, make sure there’s nothing in the seat pockets, and cross the seatbelts, ready for the next passengers coming on’,” FAAA industrial relations manager Steven Reed said.

“Now, some of the state of the aircraft is such that they almost need a hazmat suit to clean it up.”

A number of Virgin flights to overseas destinations such as Bali and Fiji have been marked by excessively rowdy passengers, who add even further strain to the crew and leave cabins in disarray.

“It’s gone beyond what was entitled, and obviously the FAAA on behalf of its members is pushing really hard to get cabin cleaners back on the aircraft between flights,” Reed said.

Virgin Australia cabin crew want to see a dedicated cleaners brought back into the cabin, so cabin crew don’t have to face cleaning up mess like this. The association recognises the need for crew to sometimes work “longer and harder” days – but it says they need better pay and more say over which shifts they take up.

Reed said that after cleaning cabins, the same crew will serve food on the subsequent flight.

Jetstar said its crew does a cabin tidy between flights. But there is also a full cabin clean done by a dedicated cleaning crew overnight.

Qantas said it cleans its aircraft between each turnaround with a cleaning crew, while planes are disinfected after each international flight.

In March, Virgin’s crew won the World’s Best Airlines Award for the eighth year in a row in the AirlineRatings.com World’s Best Airlines Awards 2026. 

In a statement, the airline said that cabin crew enterprise agreement discussions with the FAAA and TWU “have been continuing productively and in good faith”.

“We continue to listen to our team and remain focused on reaching positive outcomes for our people and our business,” the statement read.

Virgin Australia said on Friday that it would add nearly 4000 seats on flights between Perth and Melbourne and 1000 seats between Brisbane and Melbourne next weekend to help Fremantle Dockers and Brisbane Lions fans attend the AFL Grand Final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Both Virgin and Qantas have been criticised for lifting the price on return tickets to Melbourne for the event. On Monday, Virgin was charging $1728 for a Brisbane-Melbourne return flight, while Qantas’ cheapest Brisbane-Melbourne return airfare for the weekend cost $1658. Both fares are about triple the price of the same route two weeks later, Bloomberg reported.

Reed said that “flight attendants are just exhausted from doing 10-, 12-, 14-hour days”. The union wants to see pay raises for Virgin crew and a reduction of shift times to nine hours and 45 minutes, as they were before COVID, from the current elevated 10 hours.

Virgin noted that September is traditionally its busiest period of the year outside of Christmas, and the culmination of spring school holidays and the extra flights for AFL and NRL finals “means more guests will be travelling across the country”.

“We know these periods can be demanding for our operation and our people, and that’s why each year we put in place measures to support the operation including additional aircraft and crew,” a spokesperson for the airline said.

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