Air Travelers Report Finding Blood, Urine, Vomit On PlanesAir Travelers Report Finding Blood, Urine, Vomit On Planes
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Four airline passengers claim they’ve found bodily fluids on airplanes, while the Ebola epidemic claims the life of a fourth doctor in Sierra Leone.
Newlyweds Ryan Karas and Lindsi Stinson told USA Today they were flying from Phoenix to Kauai on US Airways when they found dried blood on the seatbacks.
"When we notified the flight attendant, she just said, 'Oh, disgusting, someone should have reported that,' and then walked away," said Karas, who works in emergency medicine in Colorado Springs. "She didn't apologize, or clean the mess, or even offer for us to sit in an alternate row."
The couple says US Airways emailed them an apology and told USA Today they will open on “internal” investigation into the incident.
When Angela Rauen boarded an early American Airlines flight from Orlando to Chicago she reportedly found herself sitting on a urine-soaked cushion.
"I knew it was human urine because of the very distinctive odor," Rauen said.
When she told a crewmember, she was allegedly told she could either sit on the wet set or take the next flight.
Rauen sat in the wet seat and was later reseated. She says the attendant also confessed that airline seats get sprayed by passengers “all the time.”
Linda Cannon said she was on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Las Vegas when she found her seat was also damp.
"I pulled out my hand, which was covered in vomit," she recalls.
Cannon says she changed clothes while a flight attendant “cleaned” her seat, but when she returned there was still vomit on the cushion.
"I sat for 3½ hours with the remnants of vomit on my jeans and underwear," she said. "I spent the entire flight with nausea and the woman in the next seat telling me it still smelled."
She says her complaints to United were all dismissed and the airline said it won’t compensate her for an “unpleasant odor” on her flight.
American Airlines told USA Today that planes are tidied between flights and more thoroughly cleaned overnight. Aircrafts are “deep” cleaned and sanitized using government-approved cleaning agents once a month, a spokesman said.
The Ebola virus, which has an incubation period of a few days, could easily be transported by plane to the U.S., according to Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
"A case very well could fly out of Africa, only to be detected in some distant country," Osterholm told USA Today in July.
A fourth doctor, Dr. Olivet Buck, died from the Ebola virus late Saturday in Sierra Leone. More than 300 health workers have been infected in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since the outbreak began, according to the World Health Organization. Nearly have of those infected have died.
Sources: USA Today (2), ABC News
Image credit: Flickr Creative Commons / Anthony Quintano
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