Workers use an electrostatic cleaning sprayer inside a United Airlines Holdings Inc. Boeing 777-200 aircraft at San Francisco International Airport in California, U.S. (Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- In that long-ago time before the pandemic, most travelers chose an airline based on a single, straightforward factor: price. And those who didn’t grab the cheapest fare typically steered their business toward a carrier where they had frequent-flyer miles. Cleanliness, by contrast, barely registered.