Flight Turns Around After Ill Passenger Triggers 'Biohazard'

A Delta Air Lines flight was two hours into its planned eight-hour journey Friday when it had to do a U-turn, apparently for a very unpleasant reason. After departing Atlanta en route to Spain, an audio transmission between pilots and air traffic controllers that was posted to X indicates that a passenger "had diarrhea all the way through the airplane," creating "a biohazard issue." All Delta has said officially is that a "medical issue" aboard the plane forced it back to Atlanta to be cleaned, Insider reports. The plane was ultimately delayed eight hours before finally arriving in Barcelona, CNN reports.

"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," an airline rep says. (This, unfortunately, is not the only unimaginably gross story to come out of the air travel world this summer; this one involves blood and feces and this one involves vomit.) Replies to the tweet about the Delta flight indicate that the carpet on the plane was actually ripped out and replaced by ground crew once the aircraft returned to Atlanta. (More Delta Air Lines stories.)