A Delta flight was forced to turn around after one passenger on board suffered diarrhea “all the way through the plane.”
The flight from Atlanta to Barcelona was two hours into its journey on Friday evening when the pilot asked if he could turn back.
In a video clip from LiveATC.com, posted on X (formerly known as Twitter), one of the pilots is heard confirming the incident to air traffic control, saying: “It’s just a biohazard issue, we had a passenger who had diarrhea all the way through the airplane so they want us to come back to Atlanta.”
Flight 194 had to decisively make a U-turn back to its departure destination as it was considered a “biohazard” by the crew to continue to journey.
The plane arrived back in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport at 10.40pm to clean up the diarrhea on the plane.
Over five hours later at 3am, the aircraft set off again to Barcelona for an eight-hour flight.
One X user commented under the posted clip and claimed both he and his wife were on that flight. He said: “Both my wife and I were on the flight. It was a mess. The pilots made the right decision to turn around. The ground crew ripped out the carpet and put new in. Considering the circumstances, the ground crew did a great job, along [with] the attendants and the pilots.”
FAA flight strip that relayed crews details of the incident on board— (Twitter)
Another user also heard stories from his partner who was travelling to Barcelona that day, who described the scene as “pretty bad.” He relayed “It was dribbled down the aisle, smelled horrible. The vanilla-scented disinfectant used on it only made it smell like vanilla s***. After the plane landed, it was thoroughly cleaned. They didn’t leave until around 2.30am.”
It is not known if the passenger with the medical issue returned to the flight to Spain after the detour.
Delta Air Lines, without going into specifics, responded to the situation and said: “Our teams worked as quickly and safely as possible to thoroughly clean the airplane and get our customers to their final destination. We sincerely apologize to our customers for the delay and inconvenience to their travel plans,” Delta wrote in a statement.
Last week, 11 passengers and crew were also hospitalised after severe turbulence on a Delta flight from Milan to Atlanta, the airline said.
