A Delta Airlines flight bound for Barcelona was delayed by eight hours when it was forced to return to Atlanta last Friday after a passenger suffered from an explosive bout of diarrhea in the cabin, the New York Post reported.
Two hours into the flight, the pilot of Flight DL194 requested a return to Atlanta, telling air traffic control it was “a biohazard issue.”
An audio recording of the pilot’s communications with air traffic control was posted on X by @thenewarea51 on Sunday. In the recording, the pilot explains that a passenger suffered diarrhea “all the way through the airplane,” and said, “They want us to come back to Atlanta.”
Based on an image posted on the ATC subreddit, the reason given for the flight’s return was, “passenger diarrhea all over a/c.”
After the flight returned to Atlanta, the crew and passengers were transferred to a clean and better-smelling plane and set off for Barcelona. Flight DL194 arrived in Barcelona just after 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, landing eight hours later than initially scheduled, according to Flightradar24.
The identity of the unfortunate passenger is not known. It is also not clear if the passenger was aboard the replacement plane when it touched down in Barcelona.
Cleaning crews were deployed to the initial aircraft to deal with the mess.
A spokesperson for Delta confirmed to Insider that there had been a “medical issue” aboard the plane that required it to return to Atlanta to be cleaned.
The spokesperson said airline personnel were working to “thoroughly clean” the plane and get passengers to their destination.
The airline apologized for the inconvenient delay.
