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.
Oh god, the poor person who shat themselves into the international headlines. That’s one for the books. Poor bastard.
“Hey honey, how was your flight?”
Lol
You just know he wasn’t feeling well all day and probably knew he shouldn’t get in that flight
Maybe, but truly explosive diarrhea can come on suddenly.
How hard is it to reschedule a flight for illness if you don’t get the flight insurance?
IBD is a thing.
The correct title is poo bastard
At least their name is not in this article.
They almost certainly knew they were sick if they coated the entire plane in dookie
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
On the flip side, they are immune to any other “cringe attacks” that come up. Who knows it might be strangely liberating
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.
Is that by Vasquez?
Style looks familiar.Yep, it’s from Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.
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 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.
“ill-fated diarrhea plane”
What a beautiful phrase. Shakespearean.
Maggie was on point with this article. “Defacatory disaster” is top tier journalism.
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Chef’s kiss for the image, with its brown trail.
Snakes on a plane part doodoo?
I don’t know if it’s possible to literally die of embarrassment, but if there’s anytime I’d wish it was it would be in this situation if it happened to me
Maybe he was so embarrassed, he shat himself. Turning into a vicious cycle.
As someone with severe GI issues, this is exactly why I won’t travel. I can’t imagine the embarrassment that person is now living with. I’ve seen like six articles on this in my newsfeed today. I’d be utterly mortified.
I don’t even like commenting on this because I’m contributing to its visibility, but GI issues are completely debilitating and no joke. You can’t control it, and even adults don’t seem to understand. I’m just so sad for the person at the centre of this who will never live it down. :(
I sat out on a whitewater rafting trip with friends because I couldn’t be that far from a bathroom. After many years of testing other problems, I went to a GI doctor for the stomach issues. I had undiagnosed celiac disease.
I share that sentiment- that poor person. To society’s credit, I have not yet seen any posts or articles with an image or their identity. Hopefully it stays that way.
I wanna see what it looked like
Is this the end result of trying not to poop for three days?
The brown exhaust coming out of the plane in the article was a nice touch.
Frankly I can’t see why they didn’t just alert ATC that there was a “health incident” and then tell ground crews on a closed channel what to expect. Would have potentially limited how broadly this news went out
It’s going to leak from a passenger anyway (pun intended), so it doesn’t really matter if they try to hide it.
Likely true, but I think the virality was helped by hearing the pilot’s message and it ending up on Reddit
I. Don’t. Huh? How? The passenger was wearing pants right? What??
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
Wish I’d never read that
It happens way more often than you’d expect, since you’d expect it to happen zero times.
Holy shit (no pun intended). Now that’s a sight to behold.
Maybe it was… copious amounts… and gravity utilized the pant leg openings…
Brb gonna puke from my own mental image
This is a fetish thing, isn’t it?
My nightmare is to get a case of the shits while in a tube 7 miles up in the air.
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–” “removed JUST SAY DIARRHEA ALL OVER JESUS!”
Not over Jesus too!
Holy shit.
(golf clap)
I cant breathe
This is it- This is the comment that made my wife and I laugh so hard it hurts. Thank you for this.
We call it: “The Aristocrats”!
“Aristocraps”
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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.
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