Delta First Class Passenger Finds Vomit In Her Purse, Gets A $50 Voucher And Clorox Wipes

A Delta passenger flying from Minneapolis to Boise on June 5 was flying first class, seated in 2D on an Airbus A220, when the customer ahead of them in seat 1D vomited. But she didn’t know it – she’d fallen asleep almost immediately. Her purse was open under the seat in front of her. And that’s where her opponent in the row ahead… put it.

About 5 minutes before flight 2488 landed, just before midnight, she pulled the purse into her lap. That’s when she saw the vomit – on the purse, in the purse, and now on her. The leather bag, her hat, her AirPods, and everything inside were damaged. The AirPods had slipped through the seatback pocket area and were sitting in the puddle.

The passenger reports dried vomit on the wall, too, and that a flight attendant said she saw the passenger vomiting down the wall but “wasn’t sure where it was going.” The crewmember gave her Clorox wipes. She wrote in to complain, and Delta offered a $50 travel voucher.

• This is pretty much a nightmare scenario of bodily fluids, damaged belongings, and an airline response that feels de minimis at best. This was a biohazard! Handing the passenger wipes seems insufficient.

• She must have been tired to sleep through all of this, although it was a late departure so surely plenty of passengers were tired.

• I’m not sure what the flight attendants could have done 5 minutes before landing, strapped into their jumpseats. And Delta isn’t the one that threw up. So I’m not sure what they should actually do for the passenger here (although the cabin crew didn’t deal with the situation earlier, when there was more than 5 minutes to go in the flight, though they were apparently aware of it).

Here’s a case where a passenger behaved badly on American Airlines and the victim sued the passenger who actually did the bad thing, not the airline. That seemed like it was getting the blame right.

Here the vomiter gets the blame for not saying anything and not seeking help. Once they vomited down an aircraft wall and into someone else’s property, the decent thing was to flag the crew and take responsibility for the damage.

I feel like Delta’s blame here lies in failures to check on the passenger, identify where the fluid went, provide proper gloves, and probably offer more as a goodwill gesture.

Interestingly the $50 offer is the same as what British Airways put forward (£50) when one of their customers drank 10 Bacardi minis and vomited on another passenger, the seats, and the floor. There it appeared that airline may have overserved the passenger.

Here a Delta passenger was given a vomit-covered seat, and crew told the customer to just deal with it. Not very premium! In this case, a woman was arrested and her daughter sent to child protective services after complaining about vomit in her seat.

(HT: Paddle Your Own Kanoo)