Where have all the barf bags gone? Long time ralphing. Where have all the barf bags gone? From the seat pocket fold… Such is the question The Wall Street Journal posed to us on Friday, and it’s about time the media asked! Actually, I’m not a frequent enough flyer to have noticed their prevalent absence. But I sit with my seat back upright in solidarity with fellow motion sickness sufferers (though my nausea is more car than plane-instigated) who’ve been caught in sticky situations at 30,000 feet in the air. WSJ spoke to many of these travelers, who brought moments of puking panic to vivid life. Even non-afflicted passengers are keeping tabs on the vanishing bags, trying to figure out why they’re not tucked into the seat pocket as reliably as safety info cards. Is it cleaning crews not being given enough time? Is it bed bugs chewing through the bags? Is it a TikTok trend? Is it gremlins??

Barf bags are still supposed to be put in every seat, major U.S. airlines and flight attendants say, though some acknowledged that bags may not always be replaced immediately.

“Well, something has changed,” said Susan Kemen, a 46-year-old project manager from New York who flies multiple times a year. She usually finds nothing in her seat pocket beyond the safety card, and doesn’t understand why airlines aren’t paying closer attention.

“Why would you stick somebody with the task of cleaning up passenger vomit when there’s a really easy way to fix it: just make sure there are bags in the seats before you take off,” she said.

The issue is a favorite topic on social media. On a Delta subreddit where people discussed the elusive barf bag, one user joked: “It’s in the phone app now?”

The Association of Flight Attendants union said the frequency of barf-bag restocking depends on the airports the flights are coming from and how long they’re on the ground. Some flight attendants say they aren’t fans of the bags, which can be prone to leaks. They also think quality has gone downhill. In acute situations, they turn to a more reliable alternative: gray trash bags.

Liah Honeycutt started noticing the bags’ absence a year ago. She flies about once a month and finds one in her seat around half the time. (She now brings her own.)

She’s noticed the planes she takes seem to be staying at the gate for shorter intervals between deplaning and boarding for the next flight, and wonders if the quick turnaround could be part of the problem.

“Not only am I not finding barf bags in the seat pocket, I’m also finding trash from prior passengers,” the 31-year-old motion designer from Atlanta said. “There’s no way that they are thoroughly cleaning each and every seat.”

Cabin cleaning and barf-bag restocking are often handled by third-party cleaning crews, airlines and flight attendants say. ABM, a major cleaning contractor, says its teams check for airsickness bags when they clean cabins. That typically happens overnight, but bags can also be restocked between flights if the crew requests it or if a bag is found to be full of trash or damaged. Exact timing varies by airline and schedule.

Social media has found a culprit: Passengers who use the bags to store trash often get blamed for exacerbating the scarcity problem. And don’t mention the TikTok videos showing how the bags can help turn a phone into a seat-back screen.

Dan McCarthy, a 38-year-old underwriting specialist from Austin, has been using that hack on pretty much every flight since he saw another passenger take the bag, insert it between his phone and its case and then tuck the bag’s edge under the tray table. … McCarthy says he’s always careful to put the bag back. He also can’t recall a single instance where he couldn’t find a sick bag in his seat on a Southwest flight.

[From WSJ]

So the passenger who uses barf bags to prop up his phone is always finding them, but when they’re needed for their intended purpose, the bags aren’t there for hurling passengers. That sounds like this timeline. I’ve never seen this trick with the phones, but it sounds like something that in my execution would result in the phone and case falling on the floor to separate landing spots necessitating a rescue mission that I am not currently in good enough shape to maneuver in on a cramped plane. Thanks for the hack, TikTok. For what it’s worth, WSJ said most of the people they interviewed cited Southwest and Frontier as pretty consistent in stocking barf bags. I agree with the comment that the material (paper!) isn’t all that great for containment, but airlines should be providing something. The conclusion this WSJ article ultimately came to was that the only barf bag you can depend on is the one you bring yourself. A mantra for life, really.

Photos credit: Dylan Bueltel, kai Pilger and Thomas on Pexels