A passenger on a recent United Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles says they found a maggot in their inflight meal, but they only discovered the slimy larva after already taking several bites out of the pasta dish.
Sharing several photos of the disgusting discovery on Reddit, the passenger says they quickly recovered the dish with the foil that had been covering it when presented by flight attendants before ‘quietly’ letting the crew know.
Maggot in dinner on long haul flight…
byu/rerreadit inunitedairlines
The passenger, who goes by the username ‘rereadit’, says the flight attendants were “really nice” but that there was little they could do to make up for the situation.
United Airlines did, however, credit the passenger with 7,500 MileagePlus frequent flyers miles and a week after the flight, the airline also posted a $150 flight credit into their account.
Answering questions from concerned Reddit users, the passenger says they tried to ask United about how they transport food from kitchen to plane but didn’t get much of a response from the airline.
“I was super quiet and didn’t wanna make a scene but made it clear post-flight that this isn’t a ‘me’ issue but a food safety concern. Didn’t get much from them when I repeatedly asked what their process was for getting food from kitchen to plane,” the passenger wrote.
In another comment, the passenger wrote: “Shoutout to the flight attendants who deal with these things even though they’re out of their control.”
United Airlines say it is still investigating the incident and in a short statement, the airline told us: “We take concerns like this very seriously and our team is looking into it.”
Although rare, it’s not unheard of for passengers to find ‘foreign objects’ in their inflight meals. In December 2022, one British Airways passenger even claimed to have found a dental implant in her meal during a flight from London Heathrow to Dubai.
Even that gruesome discovery, however, can’t compete with a SunExpress flight from Ankara, Turkey, to Dusseldorf in July 2022 when a passenger found a severed snake’s head in their breakfast.
In the past, SunExpress has been accused of serving food containing rogue snails and other bugs. The airline said it started a detailed investigation as soon as the allegations came to light.
Back in 2019, Air France was accused of serving tuna sandwiches on several flights which may have been contaminated with listeria, while up to 70 passengers suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea on a recent Condor Airlines flight from Mauritius.
Suspicion as to the cause of the mystery illness has fallen on the inflight meals, although Condor said at the time that there was no evidence to back up these claims.
