On Friday, an international Delta flight bound for sunny Barcelona was forced to U-turn back to its starting point, Atlanta, for an exceedingly rare air travel horror: a passenger had suffered diarrhea throughout the plane’s aisle so extensively that completing the flight was deemed untenable.
News of the incident first hit Reddit’s r/ATC subreddit, to which a user shared alarming FAA flight information marking the ill-fated flight’s decision to turn around.
“DIVERT TO ATL — PASSENGER DIARRHEA ALL OVER A/C,” the flight strip read. “BIOHAZARD.”
We tracked one of the plane’s unlucky passengers down — and they confirmed that the diarrhea was, in fact, “ALL OVER” the cabin aisles, just as that flight strip read.
“I woke up and there was a bit of a strange smell,” the passenger, who chose to remain anonymous while speaking of his Diarrhea Plane experience, told Futurism, adding that the flight attendants were forced to perform some DIY ingenuity to deal with the excrement.
“They found everything they could use,” said the passenger, explaining that the airline staff used aprons to craft “makeshift biohazard suits” to wear while dealing with the defecatory disaster. Blankets and napkins, meanwhile, were utilized to cover the feces.
You might be imagining that Delta obviously just got these travelers a new plane, right? After all, this one was covered in human feces. But alas, there seemingly weren’t enough jets to go around, and according to the passenger, the airline ultimately settled the issue by simply ripping out the Airbus’ soiled carpets and giving the passenger plane an extra-thorough clean before reboarding it.
“They actually took out all the carpets for one section of it,” the passenger said. “We were waiting three hours at the airport while they were trying to clean it, but they couldn’t clean it, so they had to rip off the carpet and change it.”
“Then we were back on,” they added. “No problem.”
The passenger also noted that the plane’s staff fully switched over for the second flight attempt, which we’re glad to hear. Anyone who’s forced to make a biohazard suit out of aprons and proceeds to manage an in-flight diarrhea crisis for the next several hours deserves some time off, not to mention a raise.
I wonder if the cleaned plane still had some lingering aroma. They have just booked flights on competitors for these passengers or offered them a hotel
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At least they didn’t force passengers to disembark or sit on the soiled seats like Air Canada did
Uh… what?
Air Canada apologizes after passengers told to sit in vomit-covered seats
https://cnn.com/cnn/travel/article/air-canada-vomit-apology-scli-intl/index.html
Assuming they mean this incident: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/air-canada-booted-passengers-vomit-filled-seats-1.6957790
“ill-fated diarrhea plane”
What a beautiful phrase. Shakespearean.
Snakes on a plane part doodoo?
Maggie was on point with this article. “Defacatory disaster” is top tier journalism.
No “Crop dusting disaster”?
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Chef’s kiss for the image, with its brown trail.
I. Don’t. Huh? How? The passenger was wearing pants right? What??
Do you tie your pant legs closed?
This is a fetish thing, isn’t it?
Maybe it was… copious amounts… and gravity utilized the pant leg openings…
Brb gonna puke from my own mental image
Any parents know. Twice I’ve seen kids shit so hard it came out the neck of their shirts.
When my little sister was a toddler, she was wearing one of those one piece zip up pajama suits.
Just her, me, and my dad home one day. Suddenly smell an awful, gut-churning smell in the house.
Go to pick up sister, sister goes squish in a place that should not squish. Noped out (I was 9 at the time) and told dad.
Dad notices the squish. Takes the toddler to the sink and unzips the pajama suit.
SHE FILLED IT.
UP TO THE TOP.
ZERO SURFACE AREA LEFT UNSOILED.
Several hours of gagging later, we survive.
Pajama suit is now a cursed object. Tossed it in the fire pit outside to avoid the smell being inside forever.
Forever burned into my brain.
now that’s a picture I didn’t want to have in mind
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It happens way more often than you’d expect, since you’d expect it to happen zero times.
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You know how when you are falling asleep but have an embarrassing memory jolt you awake? Or when you are driving and have a memory that makes you suddenly scream?
The shitter will never have internal peace. I can’t imagine much more of an embarrassing situation. Poor guy
My gf asked me what I’d do if I was the plane shitter
Without hesitation I simply replied “change my name and my face”
That’s pretty much all you can do
“Do you know how I got these scars?”
It’s a pretty shitty story honestly
I feel terrible for him too. Some people go their entire lives never knowing the kind of fear that develops with a bad case of diarrhea, and consequently don’t understand how horrible it is to live with IBS.
I have no words for what he’s going through, other than I hope he has family and friends that are more supportive than mine and more supportive than most commentors.
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I dont have IBD, I have IBS-C/M but you get what I’m throwing down:
We didn’t choose these afflictions. Our lives are hell. A basic function of every living thing causes us pain daily, and outcomes like this run our lives.
I don’t go to places that don’t have a bathroom I can occupy for a lengthy period of time. I can barely get any relief at home as it is.
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it’s damn near unliveable and made worse by the fact that you can become someone’s joke or headline
I’ve only left my house like 6 times for doctor appointments in the last 5 years because I’ve got GI issues so bad I can’t be more than ten feet from a toilet or I can’t trust things might go wrong. I’m a complete shut-in because of issues like in the OP, and I’ve had zero social interaction for years now.
I’m sorry you have to go through this. It’s awful, and you’re right, there are no accommodations. Worse, it’s a joke, so that you don’t even want to discuss it with family or your doctors.
I’m so sorry. Nobody should have to endure this. I wish you didn’t. It’s life-ruining, and the worst part is you’re utterly alone, and no one can really understand.
I hope the person this article is about can somehow find peace from all this, though I rather doubt it.
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Poor guy for sure, but at this point I might just own it and get ahead of it. Get paid a few bucks to do an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, apologize profusely, blame it all on airline food or medication or something
I know one or two folks at work who would be talking non-stop about it on Monday if this were them.
I hope they were on their way to the bathroom. If so I would have never left the bathroom for the remainder of the flight
In the full article, it said they kept the guy in the bathroom till a few minutes before landing. I’d absolutely refuse to leave the bathroom till it’s been deplaned
Same. I got so drunk on a plane once I was vomiting the whole last half of the flight. The flight attendants tried to get me to go back to my seat before we landed, but when they realized what bad shape I was in they let me stay in the lavatory until we landed.
I hope they let this shito bandito do the same.
did you learn your lesson at least? you dumb fuck have only yourself to blame.
shitto bandito might still have a medical excuse
Yes I did. Thank you for your concern.
for the remainder of my life
FTFY
I’m told it was a woman.
But women don’t poop.
Back and forth. Forever.
It really doesn’t matter though.
I’m so glad your empathetic comment is at the top of this thread. Thank you for being a good person who doesn’t take advantage of other people’s misfortune.
On the flip side, they are immune to any other “cringe attacks” that come up. Who knows it might be strangely liberating
Glass half full, love it!
Of what
We’ll duh, human excrement silly goose!
Is that by Vasquez?
Style looks familiar.Yep, it’s from Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.
Barcelona was never so happy someone got the shitters.
It must have smelt like bad poop
Is this the end result of trying not to poop for three days?
Juice cleanse
Every form of “bowel cleanse” is useless at best and deletrious at worst. Usually leans towards the latter.
It was flight DAL194 from ATL to BCN on FRIDAY 2023-SEP-01. Here it is in FlightAware:
From r/ATC:
279 DAL194 H/A359/L 3157 496 PSK125017 E0153 360 KATL./. GVE224037… FLASK.OZZZI1.KATL ODIVERT TO ATL- PASSENGER DIARRHEA ALL OVER A/ C- BIOHAZARD
My favorite part of this story has consistently been imagining the poor person that has to figure out how to communicate this in so few words. Like, “How should I word this? Restroom mishap? No, it’s not just the restroom. Passenger soiled in aisle? No, it’s mo–” “BITCH JUST SAY DIARRHEA ALL OVER JESUS!”
This is it- This is the comment that made my wife and I laugh so hard it hurts. Thank you for this.
Not over Jesus too!
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(golf clap)
I cant breathe
Mayday mayday we have a Cat 1 shit-situation, aborting flight, repeat aborting flight
A shituation you could say.
“tower, we have a shituation…”
– Sean Connery
I once vomited on a plane like I was Linda Blair. This news finally made me feel better. At least I didn’t make the plane turn around.
Link to a brief video of the aftermath (sorry it’s a Xitter link): video
No thanks, to Z and the video.
I need to understand how one explodes diarrhoea so violently that it extends the length of the aisle of an entire plane… while fully clothed.
Maybe it was a lady in a skirt.
I’m picturing the guy running up and down the plane, just spraying shit everywhere like a South park episode.
“Hot hot hot hot hot hot!”
LOL…gross
Probably was waiting for the toilet and just couldn’t hold it, then was running back and forth between bathrooms trying to get in one.
I was on a Ryanair flight a few years ago, and out of 3-4 toilets that should have been working, only one was. And a staff member had to hold the door shut on that. The queue was all the way down the plane for like 3 hours of the 4 hour journey.
Sounds like a Larry David skit 😂
If/when you get salmonella poisoning, you will find out. I didn’t understand how people died of diarrhea-based diseases until then. You shit literal liquid every 30 minutes or less, for like two weeks, and it’s unstoppable. In my case, it never really did get better. I got diagnosed with virally induced ibs and nothing ever worked quite right after that. It’s been three years since I ate that recalled food (which wasn’t in recall at the time, yay).
Salmonella feels less like a disease, and more like you accidentally ingested some sort of rat poison and your body is desperately trying to get it out by making you vomit and shit like crazy so it doesn’t stay in you.
It’s the only time I actually wished for a cork, or perhaps adult diapers. It was a new low for me, I felt like I was gonna die, lol.
Holy shit. You still have problems?
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My doctor told me shitting 4-5 times a day ain’t normal, lol. Things seem to slowly be getting better though. I dunno if my body will ever truely go back to 100%. Some say salmonella damages your immune system permanently, and based off my ass, I fucking believe it.
I think I’ve been constipated 2-3 times in the last few years since then, and I savor the feeling, lol. My hope that in another few years…perhaps I’ll be back down to 1-2 times a day.
Try some anti diarrhea meds bro
Solved it right there, did ya?
They said they’re under the care of a physician, so I think it’s safe to say they’ve gone through a few ideas.
I have, it’s just a bit overkill, like playing the piano with a claw hammer. I need a gentle touch, haha.
Salmonella can hide out in the body and get reactivated again later so I’m not surprised. Plus your gut flora took a massive beating back then.
It’s been like 15 years for me after a similar situation and 1-2 times a day is no problem, but the window to get to a bathroom is shorter than I once remember, and any kind of stress, particularly in the morning, makes for a bad time (early travel days, etc).
Stress certainly does it to me too.
Cholera makes poo even more.
Poo +
Bacterial induced IBS, but yikes.
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Get out of seat at back of plane.
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Turbulence knocks you on your ass and shite out of your ass.
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At this point the floodgates have opened and you need to just get to the toilet asap for damage control.
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Run down aisle with shite dripping out of your trouser leg.
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Read about the time you “exploded like a chocolate grenade in the middle of the plane” in the paper.
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Tubgirl’s cousin perhaps?
Ate airport sushi while going commando. Then boarding a 9 hour flight.
Some people live life in the moment.
I live life one fart gamble at a time.
There’s a truck that delivers food to a factory near where i work, they have all the usual service station teir packaged sandwiches and whatever.
We call it the “yuck truck” because straya but anyway I used to buy sushi there on occasion to test my limits.
In America they’re called the Roach Coach.
I’m stealing that lmao