A horrified airline passenger was made to sit in blood and diarrhoea during a seven-hour flight and was then given wet wipes to clean it up after a previous traveller had ‘haemorrhaged’ in his seat.
Habib Battah was flying from Paris to Toronto on Air France when he noticed a peculiar odour coming from the footwell under his and his wife’s seats a short while after then plane had taken off.
‘It smelled like manure,’ he told CNN.
The pair were taking a Boeing 777 flight with their two cats, who were in the footwell in front of the couple, each in a separate carrier. They were moving from Lebanon to the US, where journalist Battah is set to work for a short while as a university lecturer.
Battah said: ‘It was our first time traveling with the cats, and I was thinking, “Oh god, they’ve had an accident, I’m so embarrassed.”
Habib Battah and his wife were flying with their two cats in the footwell. When he noticed that the stains had soaked through to the container he used a whole pack of wet wipes to clean it
Battah tweeted about the ordeal a day after the incident. Due to the flight being packed, the couple were unable to switch seats
‘Then I thought, maybe it’s someone’s body odour. I was sniffing and sniffing, then said, let me get the cats out.’
Battah crouched down on his hands and knees to check how the pets were doing and there were no issues.
However, he noticed a wet stain on the floor beneath the cat carriers, around 20 inches long and wide, and informed the passing flight attendant.
Battah remarked: ‘I said it smells like merde – s***. She handed me wet wipes. I started wiping and it was red – blood red. And it kept coming up red. I was like, “What the hell is this?” I just wanted to see what it was. After a while, one of the flight attendants said, “You’d better go wash your hands, and here are some gloves.”‘
As Battah was busy cleaning the stain, the flight attendant relayed the message to her colleagues and the captain contacted Paris asking about the stain.
Air France HQ explained that it was human blood, as the previous day, on a Paris to Boston flight, a male passenger had suffered what the crew called a ‘haemorrhage,’ according to Battah.
The passenger had luckily survived and the captain for that trip had requested for the area to be cleaned for the plane’s next flight back to the French capital, but the cleaners seemed to have forgotten about the floor.
Air France HQ explained that it was human blood, as the previous day, on a Paris to Boston flight, a male passenger had suffered what the crew called a ‘haemorrhage,’ according to Battah
Battah was casually informed by the flight attendant that it was blood and then he noticed that the cat container was also stained and the blood had soaked into the carrier, which also functioned as a backpack.
He used a whole pack of wet wipes in a hurried attempt to clean up the mess.
Battah said that only one flight attendant seemed annoyed on his behalf and apologised, while the others were unphased.
When he asked them what the protocol was for incident like this, as it also endangers flight crew, they said that there wasn’t one.
The couple said they were offered two small bottles of Evian water to make up for it and were also handed two business class blankets to put on the floor, along with some powder for the blood stain.
It was a packed flight so there wasn’t any room for Battah and his wife to change seats.
He said: ‘We had to sit there smelling the blood for the next seven hours.
‘The smell of rotten blood is like manure. I’d taken my shoes off at the start of the flight, and there was blood on my socks.’
Three days after Battah’s June 30 flight Air France told him over the phone that the blood had been mixed with faeces.
Air France said in a statement to CNN that a passenger had been unwell on a flight the previous day from Paris to Boston and was given medical treatment on arrival.
‘As per procedure in this type of situation, a complete clean-up of the area was requested and the row of seats was made unavailable on the return flight [from Boston to Paris],’ the statement said.
‘A customer travelling on the next flight from Paris (CDG) to Toronto (YYZ) reported residual traces of blood on the floor, soiling his personal belongings. The crew immediately assisted him in cleaning his belongings, providing him with suitable equipment such as sterile gloves and disinfectant wipes.
‘As the flight was fully booked, it was not possible to move the passenger.
‘An internal investigation has been launched to understand the reasons for this situation.’
The airline said it ‘understands and regrets the inconvenience caused by this situation’ and that it was in touch with Battah.
The statement added: ‘The risk of exposure to residual traces of blood on the carpet is low, if not non-existent.’
Battah said: ‘I’ve been covering Beirut for 20 years as a journalist. I’ve lived through wars, airstrikes, seen assassinations, car bombs, and narrowly survived the port explosion. I thought I’d seen it all. I didn’t expect to find more blood than I’ve seen in Beirut on an Air France plane.’
