There isn’t much that stinks worse than an 8-hour delay at the airport. For some recent passengers that were flying from Atlanta, Georgia to Barcelona, Spain it took on an all-new meaning.
According to The Guardian “Footage has emerged of the “onboard medical emergency” that forced a US airliner back to Atlanta only two hours into its flight to Spain: a messy trail of diarrhea left by a struggling passenger.
Maintenance crews spent five hours cleaning the Delta Airlines Airbus A350 after its enforced early landing, including replacing an aisle carpet ruined in the incident.
Passengers, reportedly including the one suffering diarrhea, were allowed to re-board after an eight-hour delay, making it to Barcelona on Saturday afternoon with no further incident.
Accounts from some onboard posted to social media described flight crew doing their best to mop up the mess with paper towels and scented disinfectant. But that only had the effect of making the plane “smell of vanilla shit”, one passenger said.
Another described cabin crew placing an absorbent paper “runner” over the aisle, and passengers having to climb over seats to avoid it as they left the plane at Atlanta.
An audio recording of a conversation between the pilot and air traffic control revealed the reason for the jet’s sudden turnaround over central Virginia.
“It’s just a biohazard issue,” the pilot said. “We had a passenger who had diarrhea all the way through the airplane so they want us to come back to Atlanta.”
The next time you are stuck in a delay at the airport remember it could always be worse.
"Diarrhea Plane " – Footage of the cabin from the Delta plane headed for Barcelona that had to be diverted to Atlanta due to a passenger having diarrhea all over the plane.#Biohazard #plane #aviation https://t.co/BoDemzjEBO pic.twitter.com/Takc9QPWSC
— FL360aero (@fl360aero) September 5, 2023