Enjoying a glass of champagne is just one of the perks of flying in business or first class. But have you ever wondered what happens to unfinished bottles of bubbly after passengers disembark the plane?
The leftover champagne on airplanes doesn’t just disappear into thin air, although it might seem like it does.
So, where exactly does it go? Fasten your seatbelts because we’re about to dive into this little aviation mystery! After all the business and first-class travelers receive their complimentary champagne, there is sometimes still a bit left over.
In a post on Instagram, a former flight attendant for Emirates airline named Adriana Kinch (adriana_kinch) revealed that the extra fizz usually gets thrown away.
“At the end of every flight, we pour away all the open bottles of champagne so it can’t be used for the next flight, and we open a new bottle just before serving it to the customer,” she wrote in the caption of her post.
This practice seems incredibly wasteful, but there is a good reason airlines opt against saving it for later. It takes a little while for champagne to go flat when on the ground.
But up in the air, the lower air pressure in the cabin means that carbon dioxide is quickly sucked out of the bubbly liquid.
The champagne might produce a lot more fizz when it’s being poured out, but it will go flat at a faster rate. And, of course, flight attendants don’t want to serve stale, lifeless champagne to the next set of travelers. Everyone deserves to have their champagne fresh and sparkling.
If you regularly fly economy, you might be happy to know that leftover champagne might be able to make its way over to you.
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Leftover champagne does typically end up down the drain, but flight attendants can make some exceptions.
They can decide to present a glass of leftover champagne to newlyweds or possibly for other special occasions, too. It’s like getting a sweet taste of flying first class but without the added cost!
Wines don’t usually undergo the same treatment as champagne because they can last for a while without any obvious deterioration of quality, so you don’t have to worry about their fates.
You can check out Adriana’s post here.