A Delta flight was compelled to land back at the departure airport after one of its passengers experienced diarrhea “all the way through the plane.”
Only two hours had passed since takeoff on the Friday night flight from Atlanta to Barcelona when the pilot requested permission to turn around. The crew of Flight 194 determined that it was a “biohazard” to continue the flight and made the quick decision to turn around and return to its point of departure.
In a video clip from LiveATC.com that was shared on X (formerly known as Twitter), one of the pilots is heard 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.”
At 10:40 p.m., the aircraft returned to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to clean up the feces. At 3am, more than five hours later, the plane took off once more for its eight-hour voyage to Barcelona.
Without delving into details, Delta Air Lines replied to the incident by saying: “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”.
