A Delta flight en route to Barcelona, Spain, from Atlanta, Georgia, was forced to turn around due to a passenger having diarrhea all over the plane.
The airline pilot called the incident into air traffic control two hours into its eight-hour flight on Friday.
“This is a biohazard issue,” the pilot shared to air traffic control, which was recorded from LiveATC.com and shared on X. “We’ve had a passenger who’s had diarrhea all the way through the airplane, so they want us to come back to Atlanta.”
The flight had already been delayed for two hours prior to taking off, Business Insider reported.
A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flight strip for Flight DL194 was posted to Reddit, which indicated that the plane was turned around due to diarrhea all over the air cabin. Cleaning crews were able to scrub the plane of all fecal matter before boarding it again with passengers for it to head to Spain for the second time.
The Airbus A350 landed in Barcelona the next day at 5:00 p.m., eight hours after it was originally scheduled to arrive, according to Flightradar24. It is unknown if the passenger with the loose stool was aboard the second flight.
Delta Airlines addressed the incident in the statement:
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. (bq)
This incident comes three days after extreme turbulence aboard a Delta flight from Milan, Italy, to Atlanta sent 11 passengers to the hospital.