Social Media Rocked By The Tale Of The 'Diarrhea Plane'

Last Friday, a Delta flight from Atlanta to Barcelona had its very own Airplane! moment when a medical emergency forced pilots to turn around two hours into the flight and land again in Atlanta to address the issue.

That issue? "Diarrhea all the way through the airplane," according to the flight's pilot. How one gets "diarrhea all the way through the airplane" remains a horrifying mystery but testimony from other passengers on the flight seem to suggest that the phrase is not a metaphor and there was in fact "diarrhea all the way through the airplane."

The smelly flight occurred on September 1st. Twitter user @thenewarea51 posted an audio log of the captain describing the incident as a "Biohazard" issue. In response, several people claiming to be passengers aboard the flight confirmed that it smelled as bad as one might imagine.

A Delta Airlines Airbus A350 turned around back to Atlanta Friday night because of diarrhea throughout the airplane from a passenger and it’s a biohazard. 👀🥴

The FAA flight strip for DL194 was posted to Reddit (📷xStang05x) Also a passenger posted here asking why her son’s… pic.twitter.com/VWbkB47wF1

— Thenewarea51 (@thenewarea51) September 3, 2023

While the incident was a massive and stinky inconvenience, the testimonies did praise Delta employees for the way they handled the extraordinary circumstance, claiming the carpet of the flight was fully replaced upon landing and when passengers re-boarded the flight — around 2:00 AM — there was no residual smell.

The identity of the passenger remains unknown but it has been reported that they were met by EMTs upon the return landing in Atlanta. On social media, many opined that if they were the unfortunate passenger in this situation, they would probably abscond to the woods to live the rest of their days as a hermit from the rest of society.

The incident is yet another entry into a pantheon of wild plane stories from 2023, following the TMFINR incident as well as a Blood Plane incident from July, in which a passenger discovered a pool of blood beneath their seat.