Delta Air Lines flight 136 from Detroit to Amsterdam diverted to New York on Tuesday night after a couple dozen people became ill from the “spoiled food” on board. This was airplane food!
.@delta I need to know how you’re going to get me to Amsterdam today – I’m on the plane that’s emergency landing at JFK because you served passengers “contaminated” food – I don’t need hotel/food vouchers I need to arrive in Amsterdam today.
— Virginia (@tralala_bk) July 3, 2024
According to Delta Air Lines,
Delta flight 136 from Detroit to Amsterdam diverted to New York’s JFK early Wednesday morning after it was discovered that a portion of the in-flight meal service was spoiled.
Medical crews were on site to meet the aircraft and treat any affected passengers and crew members. Delta teams will immediately work to gather information into how this incident occurred.
This is not the service Delta is known for and we sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and delay in their travels.
Come on, people. You should know not to eat the fish.
After the Delta Air Lines diarrhea flight and the Delta maggot flight which was also an Amsterdam flight I dunno…
Gary,
And here we sit awaiting for Tim D to tell us Delta has the most profitable food poisoning, confirmed in recent (DL funded surveys) to be the form of in-flight sickness most preferred by elite passengers.
Only two dozen? Sounds like a “Wellness Flight”.
Tim Dunn / Delta jokes begin in 5…. 4…. 3…. 2…. 1….
Where’s Tim Dunn to regale us of the wonderful, profit generating delights of Delta Food Services kitchen contamination? How surveys prove DL has the best, most debilitating food poisoning in the industry?
I’m thinking of leslie nielsen….”yes that’s right…I had the lasagna.”
More evidence that people should never eat airline food. Seriously, how difficult is it to go 8 hours without a meal? You eat it because it’s there, not because you need it.
Rarely does food poisoning manifest so quickly. How exactly was the onboard food spoiled? Also, “Virginia” on Twitter went full on Karen. You wanna get to Amsterdam today? Call your NetJets concierge.
Everyone knows to never eat the salmon. At least those 60+.
The caterer sincerely apologizes for the inadvertent error in providing the spoiled food to Delta. They were accidentally misdirected and should have been sent to another American Airlines flight…
Man, these Premium Airline jokes just write themselves. Maybe Delta will give each passenger 1,000,000 Skymiles so they can fly from Albuquerque to Las Vegas for free in coach.
Oh, oh, DO & CO is supposed to be the best and they supply Delta in DTW I think.
This was a Premium assassination attempt by Delta Airlines. They assassinated their reputation.
Hopefully they had on hand, Premium Barf Bags by Gucci.
Meh… I think it only affected the people in the back. They probably should have opted for the premium Delta One experience…
DL will throw 5,000 miles their way, and they’ll giggle.
I am going to blame the people there for the passengers’ safety and the victims. USA airlines are well known for putting out questionable food. A lot of times the food is only slightly visually different than slop. The passengers knew what airline they bought a ticket for so they should have known that what they were going to get would be questionable. The people serving the food should be there for the passengers’ safety. They should at least smell if the food seems to be off odor. Finally, the passengers should look out for themselves and determine if the food is spoiled. I spend most of my time in a third world country. I learned long ago how to keep safe from bad food after getting typhoid from bad food in Thailand in the late 1980s (prior to that I had traveled a bunch in Mexico and had no problems.) Visual inspection of the food and smelling the food for bad odors are two key things to do. A slight tasting is useful if those two pass. Where the food comes from is also highly important. Uncooked food such as fruits and vegetables are always more suspect and in my opinion, more likely to lead to an upset stomach.
It’s comedy when I heard this on the news this morning, the first person I thought about was “Tim Dunn”. Tim, wherever you are, your fans at this here blog are thinking of you.
To continue, I am not squeamish about food. If the locals eat it, I am willing to try it in most cases. I like durian and had very ripe durian two days ago. I also like fermented crabs. If the crabs have been prepared incorrectly, I will throw them away. The same goes for shellfish and fish.
If he shows up, Timmy D will more than likely spin the numbers once more by declaring it was only a couple of dozen poor souls out of hundreds.
@ Gary — “Poisons”. Lol.
@jns – How can you tell if durian has gone bad? Like most people I find the smell repulsive but some people just aren’t bothered by the smell.
While I don’t doubt that Delta served bad food to the passengers, I have serious doubts about the passengers who supposedly needed medical attention. The aircraft made the turn back to JFK less than 3 hours after take-off, meaning that it had likely been less than 2 hours since the first meals were served. Allowing a bit of time for the decision-making process to play out, that likely means that from the first meal being served to the talk of people being sick was probably around 90 minutes. Food poisoning generally takes at least 6+ hours to show up. I assume that several passengers complained about the food being spoiled, which led to a general social contagion of people “feeling sick.” I’m not defending Delta in the least, but I am rolling my eyes at the passengers who felt the need to divert a flight and be met by an ambulance.
Raw oysters and mussels on board? What could possibly go wrong
It was fresh last week when they came in
Gary – your headline announces your prejudice. Absolutely guaranteed to bring out the Delta haters!
@ Christian, I have never had bad durian so I can only say what others have told me. As durian get riper it becomes more odorous. Some types are more odorous than others. I have been told that overripe durian becomes completely mushy with no crusty parts (the crusty parts add to the texture that I find delightful along with the creaminess.) I suppose that beyond that stage the proteins could become putrid or the fats could become rancid but most likely, because of the high carbohydrates with a lot of sugars (mostly sucrose), durian probably would naturally ferment. If fermentation of that type took place, it may not make a person sick any more than beer does. Salt fermentation of overripe durian is part of Malaysian cuisine but I have not tried it. It took me decades to get used to eating durian. The breakthrough for me came when I had it in the fruit smoothies that can be found in Cambodia. It was mild enough to get used to the flavor which is addictive (maybe not classically addictive.)
Kind of puts a cloud around Delta’s self-aggrandized, “luxury” aura, no?
Hmmm. My mini bag of sun chips and mini water only flight looking better.
Maybe Delta would be better if their catering service wasn’t available like the other airlines.
These pax should feel honored they were poisoned by the world’s #1 PREMIUM airline! They should each pay Delta 100K SkyPesos for the honor!
I actually prefer to fly Delta — I think they are a superior US airline. Regardless, I won’t pass up the opportunity to laugh and make jokes at their expense…
I fly out of DTW. Michigan passengers prefer Delta Air Lines because every seat features a premium and complimentary air sickness (barf) bag.
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No, that blanket statement is simply incorrect. (Several MDs in the family here with lots of first hand experience). While some common forms CAN take 5-8 hours to incubate– as the bad bugs multiply wildly in your nether reaches– there are many, quite debilitating mechanisms of onset in under two hours. Commonly 20-30 minutes.
The bad news about that mechanism of onset is that, whatever DL fed their victims? Was literally poison on the platter. Anything that triggers your body’s defense that fast? Is really rotten, literally poisonous. It’s easy to second-guess the DL response, but man if you had 30 Pax with uncontrollable Hershey Squirts, more getting sick and the lavs all backed up? Yeah, you’d get on the ground ASAP. The rapid onset here says it was very, very serious.
@Doug–
—-Food poisoning generally takes at least 6+ hours to show up.—
EDITED_EDITED
No, that blanket statement is simply incorrect. (Several MDs in the family here with lots of first hand experience). While some common forms CAN take 5-8 hours to incubate– as the bad bugs multiply wildly in your nether reaches– there are many, quite debilitating mechanisms of onset in under two hours. Commonly 20-30 minutes.
The bad news about that mechanism of onset is that, whatever DL fed their victims? Was literally poison on the platter. Anything that triggers your body’s defense that fast? Is really rotten, literally a toxin. It’s easy to second-guess the DL response, but man if you had 30 Pax with uncontrollable Hershey Squirts, more getting sick and the lavs all backed up? Yeah, you’d get on the ground ASAP. The rapid onset here says it was very, very serious. And really, really decayed/spoiled/rotted.
You can gather more information online. The economy class chicken was off, and the passengers noticed. About 2 hours 45 after takeoff, the flight diverted to JFK. Some passengers had stomach aches, none were hospitalized. I can imagine their next 24 hours are going to be sporting.
Meals went pasta-only from DTW. The CDC was notified.
The investigation is going to be interesting. Kudos to the flight crew for diverting on the news that the catering was off, and before the situation escalated. Of course, I imagine it was a short consultation with ops, someone looking up “food contamination” , and a no-brainier.
Someone’s gonna pay.
From reading part of the article here,it sure sounds like this Arline company really messed up Big time time and the reason why I say this is because they either let someone on board whom clearly had no training at all with storing made up food platters for travel properly and that could of easily caused travellers to get sick or No#2 there cold storage fridge could of been malfunctioning which allowed the food to go off
All y’all can suck it. Delta serves food poisoning unmatched by any other carrier in the world. Passengers are willing to pay a premium for rancid food you cannot obtain anywhere but a 3rd world country.
@jns: You wrote, “Visual inspection of the food and smelling the food for bad odors are two key things to do. A slight tasting is useful if those two pass.” These new flight attendant services could help differentiate Delta Air Lines as a premium airline.
I hope Delta Air Lines offers their valued silver elite or higher Medallion SkyMiles® members or Platinum American Express Card cardholders the benefit of a complimentary food smell check by your flight attendant to help reduce the possibility of putrid foul odors from Delta Air Lines food. As an additional benefit for cardmembers who spend $75,000 annually on their AMEX card, your flight attendant, upon request, will do a “slight tasting” of your meal before serving you your airline meal to help prevent passenger inflight food poisoning.
@Doug, having at one point in my lifetime been the victim, at my own hand, of food poisoning, I can tell you that not ALL food poisoning takes 5-6 hours to present. It took me slightly less than 2 hours to know and feel the results of my error. As for the medics needed to meet the plane, yes in my case it ended up putting me in the hospital for 4 days. I won’t go into the sickening details but it was not a pleasant experience. Any food poisoning experience can become severe depending on the individual involved.
Delta has the best premium food poison experience money can buy.
This is clearly sabotage from American and United airlines! The authorities should be all over this as Delta would never do such a thing.
> “I dunno”
Gary Leff included a reference to Tim Dunn (gasp)!
The way the headline reads seems to imply that Delta deliberately poisoned the passengers.
Y’all need to leave my son alone!
@Gary
Shame on you. If your wife served you a meal that contained food( that she didn’t know about), would you say she poisoned you? Of course not. Give Delta break.
It’s premium mold for premium passengers
I’m sticking with the Delta premium Maggot cuisine its healthy and no side effects
Besides where else can I get the privilege of a one way ticket for 500,000 miles and wait an hour to get into their premium lounge serving e-coli salad?
DELTA = Doesn´t Ever Leave The Airport
Photos of the chicken dish served are now viewable on some news sources with visible spots of black mold and descriptions of the food tasting sour. These do not look like something that could happen in a few hours of time. The food was probably at the wrong temperature for quite a long time before it was loaded on the airplane. The food also had an overcooked look to it and was overall visually unappealing. People need to look out for themselves because the people serving the food are not trained on food safety or just don’t care. Unfortunately enough coach passengers were not wary enough about these meals that they did not arrive hungry but instead had stomach problems and arrived late after the flight was diverted. Of course all those on the airplane who were not served these meals were also inconvenienced.
I’m surprised they didn’t try to blame it on Boeing even though it was an Airbus. Media in Detroit reported mold on chicken but I haven’t heard anything about anyone becoming sick. It was prudent to return to a near-by city with sufficient medical assistance for all passengers should it have become necessary.