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Morals Take a Holiday
The Travel Critic · August 24, 1998

On a recent transcontinental flight. I'm bored out of my mind staring at rock formations 30,000 feet below, when the attendant walks by with rental headsets-uncomfortable gray plastic headsets-for the in-flight movie. Five dollars.

But here's my dilemma: I've brought my own pair of headphones. They're comfortable, made of foam. And they're free. What to do? What would you do? Would you pay the rental fee and use your headphones? Not pay the rental fee? Pay the fee and use the ugly plastic headset?

Travelers are plagued by ethical quandaries all the time. Flight physician Bill Holdefer, who is the medical director for air ambulance service Medjet International in Birmingham, Ala., says the distance from home gives passengers reason to think differently when they're confronted with a moral decision. They know they can probably get away with it.

But should they try? "It depends on the moral fiber of the individual," he says.

I called several carriers to find out if tapping the in-flight entertainment system was OK. I couldn't get a straight answer from any of them.

A Delta Air Lines spokeswoman told me the question wasn't valid because her carrier uses special jacks in economy class that are incompatible with other headsets. She then somewhat flippantly implied that passengers should feel free to try listening in.

But one reader reports that Delta's rhetoric doesn't mesh with reality. "I just came back on a Delta flight from Salt Lake City and the attendants were checking to see who was using their own headphones. If you were, you got hit with the same $5 charge as everyone else," says Gordon Lambourne, a traveler based in Washington, D.C.

San Jose, Calif., entertainment systems expert George Martin sees the issue somewhat differently. "Come on, that's like asking, 'What would you do if you found $100 lying in the street?'" he says.

"Technically, you're renting the headset-not the movie. So if you have your own headset, you don't need to rent one. Right?"

Maybe. I think on the one hand, you're stealing from the airline by using your own headset. Even if it isn't explicitly stated, passengers in economy class ought to be compensating the carrier for the movie. On the other hand, I've got a problem with showing everyone in the cabin a film and then depriving them of the ability to hear it. That presents its own ethical problems.

The questions aren't confined to the air. Consider rental cars, which are often returned in a state of disarray.

Terry Denton, a corporate maintenance manager at Dollar Rent A Car Systems in Tulsa, Okla., often has to manage the mess. He's seen everything from wet dog hair to vomit to bodies in the trunk. I asked him if travelers should bother tidying up their rentals before returning them.

"If it's just a few candy wrappers and newspapers, they can leave it. We have service agents whose job it is to clean the cars," he replied. More serious damage-like cleaning battery acid or fish scales off the carpet -is deducted from customer's credit card, whether they like it or not. Fees can range anywhere from $40 to several hundred bucks.

Be that as it may, the garbage cans next to the car rental return send an unmistakable message to travelers bringing their vehicles back: Clean up your car. It's common sense. Sure, your rental fee may have paid the salaries of the service agents, but what's acceptable and what's right are, in this case, two different things.

There's no such gray area for hotels. Ask any manager if you're allowed to swipe the towels, and you'll probably get a uniform answer: "No." Julie Olsen, a spokeswoman for the Cheeca Lodge in Islamorada, Fla., says her property loses between $10,000 and $15,000 a year on replenishing stolen towels. (The fancy ones run $15 a piece, wholesale, but still, hotels rarely charge guests for the loss).

"We have an enormous problem with towel theft," she says. "We have to constantly buy new ones. I don't think customers realize that if they take just take one-and if everyone else takes just one-then we have to constantly get more towels."

If guests would stop stealing the turquoise towels, Olsen estimates that it would knock a few dollars a night off the hotel's average room rate. Similarly, if passengers cleaned out their cars, it would save the rental company money-savings that might be passed on to you.

Like many travelers, I'm probably a little too shortsighted to buy the argument that leaving a towel or cleaning a rental will actually lower rates. But I believe in treating other people's property as if it were my own, which has stopped me from taking towels on many an occasion. I try to clean out my car whenever I can.

As for the in-flight movies, yes, I've "stolen" a couple of them. Do I feel bad about it? When I see how much profit the airlines are making, not really.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.