A Delta Air Lines first class passenger was poisoned by a toxic weed in his salad while flying Chicago to Seattle on October 21 enroute back being with his father who passed away from cancer. After reporting the meal issue on board, a flight attendant stole the evidence, he says, in attempt at a cover up.
The reader found black nightshade (solanum nigrum) in his meal – only realizing what it was after he ate some. The flight was met by paramedics on arrival in Seattle.
That is some nasty stuff, with typical onset of early symptoms like nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and bitter or burning taste in the mouth 30 minutes to 3 hours after ingestion.
As illness continues, you can experience drowsiness, confusion, slowed pulse, dilated pupils, and — in higher doses — respiratory depression or coma. Usually patients recover within 24 hours. Fatalities are rare but have occurred (mostly in children).
As few as 5–10 unripe berries can cause stomach distress. Neurotoxic effects will generally require eating more than 20 unripe berries (or similar leaf amounts).
1) While eating my entree (Southwest Harvest Salad) in the dimmed cabin, I tasted something “off” as I swallowed a mouthful of my otherwise delightful salad.
2) I turned on the overhead light to look more closely at the salad, and promptly found a sizeable stalk of black nightshade (Solanum nigra), flowers and all.
3) This is a well known toxic plant that is a weed routinely found in agricultural settings.
4) I had unknowingly ingested an unknown amount before noticing it.
5) I became quite ill, with all of the symptoms I now know to be typical: intestinal cramping, diarrhea, excess salivation, nausea, vomiting.
6) Fortunately, I was able to save the uneaten stalk of nightshade. To provide to the paramedics who took me off the plane at Sea-Tac. So they’d know what they were dealing with. I informed lead flight attendant Larisa of my intention to save the specimen
7) Unfortunately, while in the forward bathroom being very sick, Larisa took the specimen. She refused to return it to me. She refused to show it to the paramedics. She claimed it was “Delta’s property now”.
He says he reached out to Delta with concern over the incident, and their response seemed callous – an offer of 3,000 miles. According to a Delta spokesperson,
We take this report seriously and remain in touch with the customer. Our next steps are to investigate what is being said and we’ll go from there. Delta has stringent security and quality assurance measures embedded within our onboard food and beverage operation.
In hindsight, I guess he should have ordered the meatballs. Unfortunately the Delta Shake Shack burger is only available on flights out of the airline’s hubs.
Is Jose Andres aware of this?
The airline is handling this terribly so it’s good he took pictures. Time for a big lawsuit against Delta and its food provider, and bring in the feds and make a media stink.
Premium Poison Salad
Well known? I don’t know many who would know! The fact that he did was impressive.
“This is a well known toxic plant that is a weed routinely found in agricultural settings.”
For a premium travel experience, please consider Delta.
Could be worse…he could have ordered the fish.
Would never have known to watch for that in food
There is the small chance it was a ‘plant’ (pun intended) but who would put themselves through that for some unknown case or compensation
3,000 SkyPesos, worth $30 at break-even. How’s $3,000, sound? The airline should provide a full refund and offer a lot more to make things right. And, if crew members are confiscating evidence, that’s grounds for punitive damages, if the airline condones such behavior. Obviously, not Dr. Dao-level, but I hope this victim gets decent settlement when all is said and done. Now, where’s @Tim Dunn to tell us that other airlines ‘accidentally’ poison their passengers and hide evidence, too.
If this happened to him, it must have happened to others, not necessarily on the same flight. Most folks would not be able to determine the cause. Could this possibly be a one-off? There is also a remote chance that this is a scam.
Wow.
Serving poisonous food is a new low for the airlines.
We already know the airline CEOs couldn’t care less about providing a favorable passenger experience. However, if they kill off the passengers, they kill off their revenue. This is something they definitely should care about.
I’m sure the lib-lawyers are lining up to take his case
This does happen occasionally. Less likely with greenhouse lettuces, but not impossible. The flight attendants should have collected all similar meals and reported the incident to catering immediately. It seems criminal to abscond with evidence.
Add another thing to avoid after Don’t Eat The Fish.
Jokes aside, this is just another example of Delta showing how callous they are about the passenger. Their pretense of caring has become awfully threadbare.
Im not sure Shake Shack would have been the safest alternative, i got bad case of ecoli from a shake shack in nyc due to undercooked burger. They did send me a $50 voucher though, only used it for fries and chicken sandwiches. Though to be told, the burgers ive gotten on airlines (united and alaska) have been cooked very throughly.
Hi,
I’m the guy who got poisoned.
Thanks to Gary Leff at View From the Wing for helping me get this story out there.
My educational/professional background is in horticulture science. I agree with the comments above that the average passenger would likely not have recognized Solanum nigra.
While being quite sick, I attempted to make Delta staff aware that there was a reasonable likelihood that other passengers, possibly on a variety of flights, could be exposed to the same toxic weed.
My impression was that they were more interested in sweeping the whole thing under the rug, so to speak.
I am a big, reasonably healthy adult male. My concern is that some other passengers might have a more serious reaction.
As a big three flight attendant for 40 years, i doubt the fa stole the weed, we have procedures for foreign objects in food including zip style bag, forms, and paperwork that must be collected at the time of the incident and staff that meet flight to retrieve items for reporting purposes and precautions for other flights
I’d just like to note that there is a moron above who’s rabid partisanism made him feel he needed to turn this into a political jab. (“I’m sure the lib-lawyers are lining up to take his case”).
(Yes, we a laughing at you.)
@J.A.R. — If you’re actually the guy, I’m glad that you’re alright (and well done on documenting this!) Thank you for seeking to prevent further harm to others (and for finding us/commenting here.) Hope you are able to get compensated for your troubles, (3000 miles is next-to-nothing), and that Delta makes this right. ASAP.
And Delta really messed this up. Courts look very poorly on those who destroy evidence. Once he had that picture taking it only makes it worse for them.
@1990
MayBe they should have offered him some real weed.
Surprise no comment from TD. Maybe he got some bad weed too.
This likely falls under the FAA “Serious Incident” and is mandatory reporting for the airline. The regulation is at https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-VIII/part-830
The passenger should check with the Regional FAA office in Seattle to assure that the incident was reported. Preservation of evidence is required and it is likely that the Delta FA was doing just that.
That flight attendant should be fired. And brought up on charges.
3,000 miles? It would have been worth 500,000 to keep this out of the press, or $20K, minimum. My God, the paramedics had to meet the plane, she refuses to show them. And Delta thinks 3,000 miles is fair compensation when there is such a medical bill?
The behavior of the flight attendant was insane. Delta needs to fire her, period, and he has a solid case, just because of how egregious the situation was handled, the refusal to assist medical staff.
Flight attendant Tom J, airlines may have policies, but that doesn’t mean they were followed. One thing is for sure, not showing it to the paramedics was insane, and certainly not to policy.
You mentioned the burger. I had one a couple of days ago on a Delta flight from BOS to SFO.
It was horrible, thoroughly overcooked.
It came with a brownie that had, inexplicably, salt sprinkled over it…. and not a tiny bit.
Hi.
I really am the guy. But I get it that you can’t believe everything you see online in 2025.
I’m not really an “online person” so it’s been a trip reading comments. I appreciate the support from most of you.
I recently saw that the ‘view from the wing’ article got posted to reddit. People there have decided I’m a scammer.
Somehow they believe I claimed I got sick “right away”. Nope.
About an hour to first stomach gurgles. Almost 2hr to first diarrhea. Approx 3hr before first vomit. By 6 hrs I was over the worst of it.
I have taught many weed i.d. classes in my career. I took the pics well before I had any symptoms at all. I thought they could be a humorous addition to a weed identification presentation.
Little did I know what I’d be feeling in an hour’s time….
Reddit seems to think it is suspicious that a horticulture scientist would be the one who got served the toxic plant.
I think it is much more likely that various passengers on a variety of flights out of O’Hare got it too, but don’t have a botany background.
For what it’s worth, I fully understand how weeds sometimes make it into leafy greens. It happens. I believe it was an accident.
Delta’s response to the accidental poisoning is what I think was less than appropriate.
Lying is part of the airline culture so I believe the passenger before any flight attendant story. The problem is the disappearance of the evidence. The passenger should have wrapped a small sample of the nightshade in the napkin, put the napkin in the plastic wrap for the utensils and put it in his pocket before getting any flight attendant to see the rest of the nightshade. Then never tell what you did and play the game of getting upset when the flight attendant confiscates the rest of the nightshade. Then preserve the nightshade or have it lab tested as part of preparing for the lawsuit. A lawsuit is the only way that Delta will take full responsibility for their actions and even then they will try to escape responsibility.
Another thing, to help tie this to a specific incident on an airplane, maybe a photo of the nightshade and the paper boarding pass together would help. The date is hard to set because printed newspapers are no longer available on most flights. In the past, a newspaper with the date as a background would create a “not before” indication.
@J.A.R. — Keep fighting the good fight. And don’t mind Reddit; half of those wackos are probably bots nowadays anyway.
@Alan Z — It is unlike Tim to ignore this; perhaps, he’s waiting for the ‘talking points’ from the mothership. (And, lemme tellya, I’m all about ‘Keep Climbing’ and whatnot, but don’t freakin’ poison folks! Yeesh!)
How absolutely ridiculous to accuse the flight attendant of confiscating evidence!
This reminds me of the stories of people purposely putting things in their food in restaurants, so they can sue.
JAR. First totally believe you and thanks for educating those unfamiliar with nightshade. We patrol our pastures and hay because cattle that have consumed it are not safe to eat. Birds spread the noxious weed by deification. Again goodness you’re well and spreading the word. You are the hero here.
@ Greg. We conservative lawyers are also against people being poisoned! In a socialist country you would not have a private right of action.
Hello, fellow flora and curious bipeds.
I am Nightshade. Yes, the Nightshade. Not the villain—just a misunderstood leafy dreamer with wanderlust and questionable timing.
Let’s get one thing straight: I didn’t mean to poison anyone. I was just trying to see the world! One moment I’m basking in the sun beside a compost bin, the next I’m clinging to a parsley sprig in a catering crate bound for altitude. You try sneaking onto a plane without roots or a boarding pass.
Anyway, I was minding my own chlorophyll when a flight attendant spotted me loitering between the bread roll and the butter packet.
Next thing I know—bam!—I’m tossed into a salad like some garnish with a death wish. Not exactly the window seat I had in mind.
Then came the dressing. Oh, the indignity. I’m a nightshade, not a crouton. And before I could protest, someone took a bite. Cue dramatic gasps, a flurry of napkins, and me being yanked mid-mastication like a botanical hostage.
I was bagged like contraband kale, shoved into a freezer (rude), and left to contemplate my life choices beside a box of shrimp scampi. Hours later, I was airlifted via helicopter—yes, helicopter—to what I assume is a government facility for suspicious vegetables.
The good news? There’s Wi-Fi. The bad news? I’m using a security guard’s phone while he naps. His password is “lettuce123.” Ironic.
Anyway, I just wanted to travel. Maybe get a little sun in Santorini. Instead, I’m in cold storage with a celery stalk named Kevin who thinks he’s a spy.
Send help. Or at least a compostable blanket.
Yours in photosynthesis,
Nightshade
Could be completely coincidental but I became violently ill on my flight from JFK to PEK (Air China) on the same day within the same kind of timeframe of my first meal. I had a salad that looked fairly similar, but had shrimp. No way for me to recall what it looked like.
Wondering if there are others.
@Greg, @Jack the ladd — The ideological preferences of lawyers is irrelevant; if one decides to represent their client, they adopt the viewpoint of their client for the case, where needed. A potential tort claim like this has no partisan bent. That’s just silly.
@Jack the ladd — Once again, you conflate economic ideology with dictatorship, then ramp up your assumptions to the extreme; you should know that any system of government can lead to abuses of power, harms to people, etc. There is still judicial processes nearly everywhere. Even places like China and Vietnam, communist and socialist countries, deal with disputes in court.
As a follow up, I looked up black nightshade in Wikipedia and compared it to deadly nightshade. Not the same plant. I am more familiar with deadly nightshade and was taught to avoid it as a young child. Deadly nightshade would occasionally grow in a lot of different places. As soon as it was spotted it was eradicated. Deadly nightshade is also known as belladonna.
@Nightshade Q Weedie
I absolutely LOVE your creative response. Beautifully written, and so true. The plant was just “living its best life”
As “the poisoned” I wanna say again that I appreciate everyone’s comments.
And I want to clarify something that I see several comments about:
Upon returning from the lavatory to find the specimen gone, flight attendant Larisa told me she “threw it in the trash, in the back of the plane”.
There was no mention of bagging it or preserving it in any way for Delta or anyone to investigate it.
I asked her to please get it back, out of the trash. She declined. I persisted and she agreed to have the FAs in back look for it.
Later, I asked if they had been able to find it. Larisa told me that yes, they found it, but no, I could not have it or see it.
As I have mentioned earlier. Flight crew also denied it to the paramedics when they asked.
I can absolutely appreciate that airlines have protocols that call for bagging and preserving. But that is not what I was told had happened by the flight staff.
Trashing it seems wrong to me. Especially when I had made my intention to preserve it clear to staff.
@J.A.R. — Live and Let’s Fly (Matthew Klint) just posted about your incident as well. Word is getting out.
@Nightshade Q Weedie — That’s some @Ken A-level fine work, sir!
(Still nothing from Tim… hmm…)
This is a new in-flight benefit for Lifetime Diamonds.
@ 1990 — I think Tim may have eaten a salad on Delta recently.
I’d like to see some documentation or report by the paramedic that the FA refused to show the weed. Yeah, that should be at a minimum a firing offense, if not positioning the company for criminal liability if others become ill.
1990
how is that someone who is a self-proclaimed expert on this plant, ends up being the only one that supposedly was poisoned by it? and, no, the others didn’t just suffer in silence.
and no airline or company sources anything solely from one farm.
this isn’t just something that accidently ends up in the food production line or is the result of poor food preparation.
The chances of one person being affected by this and just on one airline are next to, no literally, nil.
and, on what planet does one think they can accuse someone of poisoning them and then not allowing the evidence to be examined by experts?
You can bet that DL had the “evidence” turned over to food safety experts for examination including every other tray on the aircraft; only if law enforcement met the flight and gathered the evidence would the passenger been allowed to retain the evidence.
making a false accusation of food or medicine adulteration is a serious federal charge.
DL, its caterer, and the FBI will investigate every possibility.
@ Tim — Just go away, please.
@Tim Dunn — “It’s a bold strategy, (Tim). Let’s see if it pays off…” Maybe silence and hoping this goes away would’ve been a better strategy than blaming the victim and attempting a character-assassination (he ‘planted’ the plant!) Reminds me of United’s post-Dr. Dao smear campaign.
I didn’t say he did it. I said any credible forensics analyst has to consider all possibilities including that the “victim” was actually the perpetrator.
It is an investigation. Not sure why you or anyone else thought it would be any different.
again, we aren’t talking about spoiled food. We are talking about something being introduced into the food chain which shouldn’t be there. That is criminal for whoever did it. Could be the grower, could be the caterer, could be the FAs. and it could be someone that came on this very site to call himself an expert.
But let’s be clear that we aren’t talking about food that was left out of refrigeration for too long.
We are talking about willful adulteration of food or medicine – which is a federal crime.
Remember the Tylenol crisis?
Whether DL says anything or not, you can bet law enforcement is involved.
For anyone to think you would make an accusation of food adulteration and expect the victim to be able to retain the evidence is the height of being naive.
@Tim Dunn — I did say anyone was a pedophile rapist adulterer thief, but, we should just ‘put that out there’ for the jury, you know, because relevance doesn’t matter, and also, hearsay is cool now, like, in the court of public opinion. I donno man, seems like a smear campaign to me! (I’d’ve given more than a mere 3,000 SkyMiles, just sayin’… throw in a few Biscoffs!)
You scare me with your fascination w/ this story, 1990.
I didn’t say he was a pedophile or any such thing.
I did say that, when a foreign substance appears in any product, all questions have to be asked about how it got there, including whether the victim had a role in putting it there.
For someone that claims to be as well-traveled as you are, and the same goes for the thought leader, it isn’t really a bizarre concept to make sure all of the cards are turned over on the table.
I’ll be curious to hear the outcome but, even though DL has the deepest pockets, it is least likely to have put it there.
and given that DL isn’t a very large airline at ORD, you have to wonder how many other meals were put on, ahem, larger airlines at ORD that might have been tampered with.
As the guy who ate the nightshade, I want to clarify a few more things that seem to have been misunderstood by at least a few commenters:
1) I absolutely do NOT think there was anything ill-intentioned (or intentional at all) about that toxic plant making its way into my meal. Someone has made reference to my meal having been “adulterated”, which implies it was done intentionally. I do NOT believe that happened. Weeds make their way into salad greens routinely. Just like you occasionally find aphids or a caterpillar in your broccoli, etc
2) My issues with Delta’s handling of the situation have to do with their response. Specifically the decision to throw away the plant before it could be looked into, and to deny the paramedics access to the plant.
3) I am not seeking some big lawsuit, as several commenters assume. I simply found Delta’s offer of 3000 skymiles to be oddly/inappropriately low, given what I’d just been through. I am still waiting to hear something further from Delta.
4) I have never referred to myself as an “expert” in regards to this particular species, as one commenter states. I do have a professional background in horticulture, and I have quite a bit of experience identifying weeds in agricultural settings, just like many other people. Furthermore, I agree with posts saying it is NOT the same plant as what is known as “deadly nightshade”. I have never suggested otherwise, or that I was at risk of dying.
5) My primary interest, from the moment I recognized what was in my salad, was to get the word out for safety. I’m an educator. That’s what I do. The more people who are aware, the fewer who are likely to accidentally ingest.
6) While the decision by a staff member to throw the weed in the trash was not great, it is not clear to me that it was malicious. Wrong? Sure. But which of us hasn’t done something in a stressful moment that later turned out to have been the wrong move? I do recall the flight attendant saying she was very sorry this had happened to me.
I hope Delta is doing the right things behind the scenes. And I hope they reach out to me so we can have a reasonable discussion about what happened.
But this doesn’t have to be some big fight.
Thank you to all who have been supportive.
And to those skeptics who accuse me of b.s…..I get it. Modern life is full of scammers. Just doesn’t happen to be the case here.
@J.A.R. — Hope you hear back soon!
@Tim Dunn — It is spooky season, after all.
Weird coincidence, maybe, but I just flew Delta MSP to San Francisco on Tuesday, had the fruit and cheese snack box, which tasted normal, but became very ill with the same symptoms shortly after landing. I do not have a sensitive stomach so this was very unusual for me. I was so sick that night I couldn’t take full breaths. Only today (Sun) do I feel normal again. I tried to submit a comment to Delta the next day but couldn’t get through the automated system and gave up. Could there have been any cross contamination?!
JAR,
food producers and processors have quality controls to remove naturally occurring but non-toxic substances; your food was adulterated.
You, by your own admission are far more knowledgeable about the subject than the average passenger.
I am not sure why you or anyone else thought you would be able to retain the evidence when you accuse someone of attempting to poison yoiu.
DL is a pretty small customer for whatever caterer served that flight. It is simply a statistical anomaly to think that no one else found the same thing or experienced the same symptoms.
DL’s caterer and DL undoubtedly already have an investigation going on in which they may consult law enforcement. that is just what happens when an accusation is made of having a toxic or lethal substance in the food or medicine supply.
I wish you well but, because of incessant badgering by 1990, had to provide a different perspective.
@Tim Dunn — Did you just see MSP’s comment? I mean, if this isn’t a one-off or a two-off, that could be a far bigger deal.