On Sunday, an American Airlines passenger from Phoenix to Austin was removed from the aircraft for passing gas – and talking about it with other passengers in the cabin.
As one of the customers on the plane shared the not safe for work, work from home, or polite company story:
[A]s soon as he sat down he was grumbling about something under his breath… Several minutes pass and majority of people are seated but we still hadn’t left the gate. I overhear him loudly say “You thought that was rude? Well how about this smell” and farted.
…[W]hile kinda funny to overhear, it was uncalled for especially coming from a grown man on an airplane nonetheless. …[T]he guy seated next to me and I exchanged smiles and shook our heads. It’s early evening and several people are having snacks or eating food…. The man who just purposefully farted moments ago decides to loudly and condescendingly say “yeah, everybody let’s just eat the smelliest food possible all at the same time”.
A guy in the row over replied, “if you don’t like it you can fly private” to which [passenger] says “that’s so [expletive] rude”, and another person nearby chimes in “I think we’d all agree you’re the rude one here.” [Passenger] replies something like “that’s just so low class” and the other guy rebuttals with “well you’re back here in economy with the rest of us” lol.
…The plane is finally taxiing towards the runway but comes to a stop. An announcement comes over saying “apologies for the interruption but we are returning to the gate, we will give you more info when we have it.” We get back to the gate and a stewardess comes back and informs [passenger] that he will not be staying on this flight. He simply replies, “I don’t understand” and she tells him they’ll talk about it off the plane. He gets up, grabs his bag and quietly exits the plane.
Fortunately “the trip was only delayed by 15-30 minutes,” and the customer is nothing but complimentary of American’s handling over the man who both smelt it and dealt it.
American Airlines Gate With Flight Headed From Phoenix to Austin
An American flight, by the way, was once forced to make an emergency landing when a passenger lit a match to cover their flatulence. American really will remove passengers for foul body odor.
American Airlines Planes In Phoenix
On the other hand, American gave out free bowls of chili to flight attendants before their trips to encourage them not to picket, and to… well, not exactly improve customer service, right?
American Airlines Rebooking Desk In Phoenix
One Kenyan lawmaker even proposed to tackle the problem of too many passengers passing gas inflight. Here’s why it happen so much on planes (and what you can do about it). Although I sort of think it happens most with flights departing Washington’s National airport and not because Members of Congress and their staffs are full of hot air:
Ben’s Chili Bowl, Washington National Airport
Changes in air pressure cause the body to produce more gas. An average person does this 10 times a day anyway without changes in altitude even. Cheap slimline seats are even worse because the material they’re made of isn’t absorbent.
Avoid fried foods, cabbage, broccoli and brussel sprouts. Consider taking gas-x or beano if you’re especially prone to the issue. And if your seat mate passes gas, try to ignore it, what else can you really do?
I will not take seriously any exegesis of proper behavior when the author uses a term like “stewardess” which is many decades out of fashion.
Biochemically, loud farts often do not smell. There’s a reason for the expression “silent but deadly.”
I know this is not a food or health blog, but other than the directive against fried foods, cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts do not cause flatulence in people with adequate gut health from an adequate intake of dietary fiber.
Guy is 100% unacceptable. However, the part is left out of why he was so aggravated. There are a lot of people who think it’s appropriate to bring fast food from the terminal onto the plane. It does stink up the whole joint and it is everyone’s air.
Now on the No Fart List.
Given what they try to pass off as airline food these days, you bet I bring my own.
Who doesn’t love the smell of Chik-fil-A nuggets?
An aside. One old fashioned way to remove “smell” in the bathroom IS to light a match, then put it out. For whatever science, the sulfur smell of the blown out match does cover up the smell of whatever was deposited into the air.
We keep matches in our bathroom for this.
I always avoid cabbage, broccoli and brussel sprouts. Even when i’m not flying.
You know, this sort of plebian thing happens only on the non premium airlines, like United, American, & Southwest. It would *never* happen on an ultra premium airline like Delta!
Take it from me, I’m a self proclaimed expert! Oh and Delta is the best.
@Dignity: you’re misattributing “stewardess” to the author, because it was actually part of a quote from a passenger. Bonus: “exegesis” is more usually associated with scriptural interpretation, so a better and more universally accepted word would have been “explanation” or “prescription”.
Delta flyers only fart premium (high-octane) gas.
I don’t think absorbent seats is a good solution.
This is why I play it safe with a good pbj.
I recommend reading the Kenyan article linked to above. It is unintentionally hilarious.
Hey Dignity: the author didn’t use the word stewardess.
The passenger giving the report used it.
To help keep American Airlines passengers in the flagship position as gas-producing passengers across the world’s top five airlines, in today’s American Airlines Admirals Club fart-producing menu are two soups. The minestrone is “slow-simmered tomatoes and garden vegetables with hearty chickpeas and dark red kidney beans.” A bonus is this soup is vegetarian and a good choice for avoiding gluten.
The second soup is Chicken Tortilla Soup. It has “roasted corn, diced tomatoes, Monterey Jack cheese, jalapenos, and tortilla chips.” It is also gluten-free but lists milk as an allergen.
When you are an esteemed American Airlines Admirals Club member, you should be a contented and happy farting passenger during your next American Airlines flight.
Once I calculated the volume of gas quietly farted by the 250 passengers of an 8 hour flight, after making a number of assumptions such as the volume of the average fat (about 70 cubic cc) the average number of farts/hour (1). The total volume was 140 liters (if my math is correct) or 37.0 gallons! Imagine 37 gallons of gas roaming around the cabin during such a flight. I have spoke to the crew people that open the door of an airliner after such a flight and they have told me that the air that comes out of the airplane stinks badly!
It’s interesting that people are so vehemently offended by flatulence, yet they don’t have the same level of opposition to body odor or halitosis.
Everybody passes gas. It’s a normal body function. It doesn’t harm anyone and quickly dissipates. Yes, it is an unpleasant odor but people need to stop acting like they are just shocked and disgusted that someone may have passed gas. Get over it!
“well how about this smell”… epic
“Stewardess”
No link to the original article, but here you go, and it says FA not Stewardess.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/198eyqa/person_removed_from_flight_phoenix_to_austin/
Seriously, if you can’t be bothered to cite sources don’t be bothered to post at all.
@Ehud Gavron – (1) I include the link literally in the first sentence of the article, so I don’t know what on earth you’re referring to with “if you can’t be bothered to cite sources don’t be bothered to post at all.”
(2) I copied/pasted from that link for the quote above. So if the word is no longer there then it’s been edited.
The flatulent passenger paid good money for a ticket for transport. He has rights under the contract. Does AA have any lawful basis or contractual basis to deny him transport? Is flatulence a basis for AA to deny him the benefit of his purchase? I’m actually being serious here. I cannot think of a proper reason under the contract for this passenger to be offloaded. Next thing will be offloading passengers for reading unpopular books or wearing the wrong color shoes.
@Gary Leff – correct. You can see in the Reddit comments that people were correcting the original post where he said “stewardess”.
Bad aircraft design when so many are packed in such a small space with an artificial atmosphere sealed with them.
When I was a Delta flight attendant (’99-’03), it was explained during our training that passengers can be removed for the obvious things such as violence but the airline reserved the right to remove people if they were: intoxicated, emanating an infectious disease and/or malodorous.
Speaking of flight attendants, if you want to see what some of them do about their own flatulence, look up the term ‘crop dusting’
SWA wold change out the bottom seat cushion when it exceeded FPC limit. It did not require a visual inspection butt an olfactory complaint.