A Russian airline banned chewing gum because passengers are gross

Chewing Gum
(Image credit: Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

Take off your shoes, remove your laptop, and... open wide?

If you're flying on the Russian airline Pobeda, a quick mouth scan could become a reality of airport security after the budget carrier banned chewing gum on its flights due to the cost of removing it, the state-run Tass news agency reports. Scraping off each masticated glob left behind by a passenger costs the airline roughly 100,000 rubles, Pobeda's CEO Andrei Kalmykov said, which amounts to about $1,700.

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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.