Expert Advice for Dealing with Unpleasant Odors While Flying

Modern jetliners are amazing machines, transporting up to several hundred passengers seven miles high between cities—often traversing oceans or multiple continents during their journeys. They’re also enclosed spaces with all those people packed in together—people with different perspectives on hygiene habits.

Anybody who travels enough will eventually encounter a bad smell onboard a flight from a variety of sources. Sometimes, it’s a matter of personal hygiene, in other cases, it’s an overly flatulent passenger, but what recourse do passengers have when they find themselves stuck on a plane with a malodorous cohort?

"If you’re near a strong odor, my advice would be to move," says a journalist and founder of the consumer advocacy nonprofit Elliott Advocacy-Christopher Elliot. "If you can relocate to a different seat, that’s the best solution."

On airlines with assigned seating, if the boarding door is still open, the assistance of airline ground staff is typically required. Passengers can alert a flight attendant, who can request assistance from an airport agent. If there’s another seat available, the easiest solution is simply to move seats—with the help of airline staff—so they know you’re still onboard when they do their headcount.

It’s also important to involve crewmembers because they may need to gather more information about the situation—particularly if the flight is fully booked. Airlines’ contracts of carriage (the document that outlines when airlines can refuse to transport passengers after they have bought a ticket) generally allow them to deny boarding to passengers who are offensive or annoying to other passengers, and that includes smelling exceptionally bad—as long as a disability or medical condition isn’t the underlying cause of the odor.

On full flights, passengers giving off offensive odors may be denied boarding if another passenger complains—so be prepared for that possibility. Airlines will generally rebook such passengers onto later flights to give them time to address the odorous issue, although historically, these situations tend to escalate.

A family removed from an American Airlines flight in 2019 later sued, claiming religious discrimination was the cause. Another passenger denied boarding on a United Airlines flight in 2018 also sued, claiming racial discrimination.

Passengers whose odors are the result of a disability or medical condition can’t be denied boarding for that reason. On flights without alternate seating, passengers who are unable to sit next to such a passenger would typically be offered a later flight. It’s also important to alert a crewmember if the odor is due to a substance in the cabin that might be considered a biohazard, such as bodily fluids.