For most air passengers, the travel experience is merely shit in the metaphorical sense, what with its relentlessly capitalistic shittiness and its never-ending ability to top itself. But for passengers on a recent flight from Atlanta to Barcelona, the shittiness took a decidedly literal turn.
Per FOX 5 Atlanta, the pilot of a Delta Air Lines flight was forced to ditch the originally scheduled flight plan due to apparently extreme diarrhea from a passenger we can safely assume was not a popular presence on the aircraft in question.
Unconfirmed audio allegedly featuring comments from a pilot on the flight, as heard below, sees the extent of the diarrhea being relayed in an impressively calm manner.
"Negative. It’s just a biohazard issue," a voice, allegedly that of a pilot, says in the audio clip. "You know, we’ve had a passenger who had diarrhea all the way through the airplane so they want us to come back to Atlanta."
When reached for comment on Tuesday, a Delta spokesperson did not mention diarrhea specifically but said “an onboard medical issue” had caused the flight to return to Atlanta.
“Delta flight 194 from Atlanta to Barcelona returned to Atlanta following an onboard medical issue," a Delta rep told Complex. "Our teams worked as quickly and safely as possible to get our customers to their final destination. We sincerely apologize to our customers for the delay and inconvenience to their travel plans.”
In a separate statement to Complex on Tuesday, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rep cited a "medical emergency" as the cause for the turnaround.
"Delta Air Lines Flight 194 returned safely to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport around 10:40 p.m. local time on Friday September 1 after the crew reported a passenger medical emergency," the FAA rep told Complex. "The Airbus A350 was headed to Barcelona."
A source close to the situation confirmed to Complex that the Airbus A350 had 336 customers aboard and ultimately landed without additional incident on Sept. 2 at 5:16 CEST, just over eight hours behind its initially scheduled final destination arrival time.
One theory about what transpired here, and one that’s notably presented purely as the opinion of this writer and not based on any confirmed or even suggested information, is that this “diarrhea” was actually just the manifestation of the stench of wealth emanating from first class. But I digress.
