Flying isn’t glamorous. It hasn’t been for a while. The seats are shrinking, the snacks are sad, and someone near you is always coughing like they just escaped a coal mine. Still, most of us follow a basic social contract: don’t be gross. One passenger took a weedwhacker to that contract and left their toenails behind as evidence.
Flight attendant Leanna Coy recently posted a TikTok documenting a truly cursed midair discovery: a pile of freshly clipped toenails scattered on the plane’s floor. “Those are toenails,” she wrote in the captions, along with a much-needed trigger warning. According to Coy, “The passenger clipped their toenails mid-flight and left them.” Just a little sky trash for someone else to clean.
Set to the overly chipper “Nothing beats a Jet2 Holiday” jingle, Coy’s video drew thousands of horrified comments. One person summed it up perfectly: “Straight to jail.” Another chimed in, “No fly list.” And honestly? Fair.
People Won’t Stop Clipping Their Toenails Mid-Flight, and This Flight Attendant Is Fed Up
It’s bad enough when people go barefoot on planes (a widely hated move). But clipping your nails and scattering the trimmings like some kind of personal confetti crosses into felony territory, if not legally, then at least morally. Coy didn’t name the offender. When someone asked if it was her, she just replied, “Wasn’t me!”
Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated case. Public grooming has become an airport pastime. Some travelers pull out tweezers in TSA lines. Others do full pedicures at the gate. For the truly bold (or deranged), the airplane cabin becomes a salon in the sky.
Coy has previously called out other high-altitude crimes, like seat swapping and ordering decaf (the latter is controversial, we admit). But even those pale in comparison to finding stranger shrapnel in your aisle. One commenter said what we were all thinking: “The poor people sitting next to them.”
There’s no official FAA rule about clipping your toenails on a plane. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s time for a sign on every seatback that says: “Keep your damn clippings to yourself.”
Because if the last thing you see before takeoff is a stranger’s crusty keratin flakes rolling toward your foot like tumbleweeds, we’ve all gone too far.
The post This Flight Attendant Has Had It With People Clipping Their Toenails Mid-Flight appeared first on VICE.
