Delta flight forced into emergency landing by passenger’s diarrhea

News

By Marjorie Hernandez

September 4, 2023 | 3:32pm

It was a crappy situation.

A Delta flight from Atlanta to Barcelona was forced to turn around and make an emergency landing after a passenger “had diarrhea all the way through the plane”.

The Airbus A350 aircraft was two hours into a transatlantic flight from Georgia to Spain on Friday when the pilot asked to come back because of the fecal fiasco.

“This is a biohazard issue,” the pilot said to air traffic control recorded from LiveATC.com and shared on X.

“We’ve had a passenger who’s had diarrhea all the way through the airplane, so they want us to come back to Atlanta.”

The identity of the passenger remains a mystery, but the passengers and crew were transferred and Flight DL194 finally made it to Barcelona at 5:10 p.m. the next day — eight hours later than scheduled, according to Flightradar24.

It is not known if the passenger who had the diarrhea problem was aboard the plane when it touched down in Spain.

An alleged Federal Aviation Authority flight strip was posted on Reddit, which appeared to confirm the situation involved “biohazard” all over the plane.

Cleaning crews were able to scrub down the aircraft once it landed in Atlanta since flight records show it was used for another flight.

Delta officials confirmed there was a “medical issue” on the plane and it had to be redirected to Atlanta to be cleaned, according to Insider. The company, however, did not elaborate on the medical reason.

“Our teams worked as quickly and safely as possible to thoroughly clean the airplane and get our customers to their final destination,” a Delta spokesperson said. “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the delay and inconvenience to their travel plans.”

Delta passengers had a rough week in the air— another flight en route to Milan, Italy, had to be redirected to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Aug. 29 when it hit severe turbulence, injuring 11 passengers.