A Delta Air Lines flight from Boston to Rome was reportedly forced to divert to New York JFK over the Labor Day holiday weekend after a passenger experienced “severe bouts of diarrhea” all over their seat.
Delta Air flight DL departed Boston Logan International Airport at around 6:30 pm on August 30 but less than an hour into the eight-hour transatlantic flight to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, the packed Airbus A330 aircraft with 281 passengers onboard made a sudden u-turn back towards the US coast.
The pilots of the eight-year-old aircraft requested a diversion to New York JFK for what was described as an “onboard medical issue” and within little more than an hour, the plane was back on the ground.
It has since been reported, however, that the medical issue was actually a passenger who suffered severe bouts of diarrhea all over their seat, prompting the diversion back to a Delta hub where cleaning teams could get to work making the aircraft presentable again.
The unfortunate passengers who witnessed the incident were thankfully transferred onto another plane at JFK to complete their journey, while the first aircraft was grounded until Saturday afternoon before it was allowed depart for a scheduled flight to Milan.
Bizarrely, this is the second time in just over a year that a transatlantic Delta Air Lines has been forced to divert due to a passenger suffering extreme diarrhea.
On September 1, 2023, Delta Air flight DL194 from Atlanta to Barcelona was forced to make a U-turn just two hours into its eight-hour flight to Spain after a passenger reportedly suffered diarrhea ‘throughout the plane’.
In radio communications between the pilots and air traffic controllers, the Captain was recorded saying that he needed to divert because the passenger had caused a “biohazard issue” as there was “diarrhea all the way through the airplane”.
Gruesome video taken by shocked passengers, showed the mess that had been left along the aisle. Flight attendants had valiantly tried to cover up the evidence with spare blankets but the stench alone made it necessary to get the plane on the ground as soon as possible.
In 2022, a British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Lagos, Nigeria, had to be scrapped after a passenger deliberately stripped naked, defecated on the floor, and smeared his own feces into the curtains while running at other passengers.
The suspect was apparently due to be deported after being refused entry to the United Kingdom but he attempted to stop his removal by disrupting the flight.
An entry in the plane’s logbook explained what happened: “During boarding, passenger stripped from (the) waist down and defecated on rear galley floor. He sat in it and rubbed it into galley floor and aisle carpets.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Delta told us: “Delta apologizes to our customers for the delay in their travels from Boston to Rome on Friday night.”
“We thank them for their patience as the aircraft diverted to New York-JFK before continuing on to Rome early Saturday morning.”
Sounds like a SHI**Y situation indeed !
The smell must’ve been horrendous. But you know what they were real lucky that they weren’t already halfway there and flying over the Atlantic. Luckily they just had to divert a short distance to New York. I can just imagine the conversation that the pilot must’ve had with the control tower. Flight 930 to Boston Control tower, go ahead flight 930, I’m declaring an emergency, requesting to divert to New York, what’s the emergency? Some passenger had the Hershey squirts and shitted himself.
What a crappy story ! FAA should start calling these diversions “code brown” !
Can you imagine what the conversation must’ve sounded like between the pilot and the Boston control tower?
How come all over the seat? There are toilets on the plane.
They should serious compensate the passengers next to this person.