An American woman grounded a plane after she suffered a bout of diarrhoea and vomiting during the flight.
The plane had to go through an extensive deep-clean after a woman’s sickness bug made the toilet unusable.
Meghan Reinertsen admitted on TikTok that she experienced every traveller’s worst nightmare, trapped thousands of feet above ground in a tiny plane toilet cubicle.
She claims her uncontrollable food poisoning grounded a United Airlines flight at Indianapolis after her diarrhoea made the toilet ‘a biohazard.’
Meghan, a writer and actor who works as a nanny, got violently ill on her way back from Portugal to Indianapolis via Newark, New Jersey.
She said she was already feeling unwell at Newark airport, but decided to risk it and board the plane despite feeling ‘a disturbance, deep deep.’
Shortly after take-off, she had to rush to the bathroom as she was hit by ‘full body sweating, I’m crying, my insides are cramping.’
She was forced to ignore the seatbelt on sign and rush to the toilet before the worst could happen in front of hundreds of fellow passengers, saying ‘I couldn’t let that happen to me.’
‘For the next 20 minutes, I have more diarrhoea than any human should have in their life.’
Her nightmare didn’t end there as she began feeling something else rise in her stomach, which prompted her to scream help from the flight attendants to bring her a bag.
Symptoms of norovirus
Norovirus often causes outbreaks during the winter, but it can also be caught while travelling.
Known as the vomiting bug, norovirus causes vomiting and diarrhoea.
The symptoms can start suddenly and include:
- feeling sick
- being sick (vomiting)
- diarrhoea
It can also include a high temperature, a headache, tummy pain and body aches.
Those with the bug should wait for two days to be free of vomiting and diarrhoea before going back to school, work or nursery.
The seasoned crew, who have seen it all, let her stay in the bathroom for the entire flight.
She was told to ‘brace for impact’ while staying in the toilet during landing, when passengers normally have to get back to their seats.
On the ground, Reinertsen was helped out in a wheelchair before a haz-mat team was reportedly brought in to deal with the mess.
She said: ‘A flight attendant comes over and says, “Everybody’s off the plane now, go ahead and take your time and come out when you can, the next flight has been cancelled.”‘
‘In the moment, I’m not thinking it is because of me.
‘They had to wheel me off the plane in a wheelchair and wheel me to baggage claim.’
She said staff told her that a haz-mat team rolled in later to clean the insides of the plane in case ‘I brought something back from Portugal.’
‘I’m a biohazard, I’m a patient zero,’ Reinertsen added.
Her explosive admission on social media attracted thousands of reactions.
One woman, who said she was working for United out of Indianapolis at the time, said the crews were ‘shocked that a flight had to be cancelled.
She said: ‘I was on the ramp so we had to tow the plane to spot where we could overnight it. If it makes you feel better, I don’t think the cleaning crew ever said anything.’
A spokesperson for United Airlines told Metro: ‘This incident occurred in July 2024. Our flight crew is trained to assist customers in situations like this and helped as much as they could during the flight and upon arrival in Indianapolis.’
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