How to Navigate Food Poisoning During Your Flight
In this month’s “Dear Eugene,” we address the horror of all horrors: what to do if food poisoning strikes while you’re mid-flight.
Inspired by our intrepid founder, Eugene Fodor, Dear Eugene is a monthly series in which we invite readers to ask us their top travel questions. Each month, we’ll tap travel experts to answer your questions with the hopes of demystifying the more complicated parts of travel. Send your questions to [email protected] for a chance to have them answered in a future story.
Dear Eugene, my sister experienced terrible food poisoning in the middle of her flight. Her story is a thing of horrors: not only did she soil herself, but she was stuck in the airplane bathroom the entire flight. Her story haunts me: what are my options if I get food poisoning mid-flight?
In the 1980 film Airplane!, a group of airline passengers are struck by a mysterious foodborne illness and must—according to Leslie Nielsen—be “gotten to a hospital immediately.” Among the afflicted are the pilots, leaving a passenger to land the plane, and hijinks ensue.
Airplane! is generally regarded as one of the best screwball comedies of all time. It is largely based on the airline disaster drama film Zero Hour!, which is itself based on the Canadian TV movie Flight Into Danger. The common thread across all the productions is the notion that the pilots and passengers on the plane were put in danger by food poisoning onboard the aircraft.
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The possibility of airline meals being contaminated has long been known by airlines. A 1975 incident involving a Japan Air Lines (JAL) flight from Anchorage to Copenhagen hospitalized over a hundred passengers. Investigators linked that event to improperly refrigerated ham omelets prepared by a cook with an open wound.
The pilots operating the flight had, by chance, elected to eat other food instead of the scheduled breakfast. Fears that foodborne illness could have compromised their ability to complete the flight safely drove JAL and many other airlines around the world to implement rules prohibiting pilots from eating the same meals for safety reasons.
Airline passengers today can rest assured that foodborne illnesses aloft are exceptionally rare, thanks to modern food safety standards. Yet, recent news reported that a Delta Air Lines flight bound for Amsterdam diverted en route after it was discovered that a portion of the coach meals were spoiled, suggesting that the threat hasn’t been completely eliminated.
Scott Laird, a regular contributor to Fodor’s and avid traveler, shared two examples of when he felt ill onboard.
“Once, in Anchorage, I boarded a flight after a rough night that I’m certain was related to something I had eaten in a local restaurant the night before,” recalls Laird. “I told the flight attendants I was feeling under the weather, and they plied me with ginger ale for the next three hours, and I even managed to nibble a bit of the inflight meal. By the time we reached Seattle, I was feeling near normal, but they certainly kept a watchful eye on me the entire flight.”
Later, Laird encountered a similar situation with a much quicker onset.
“It was a flight from London to Dallas, and I felt fine until just after the second meal, just before arrival,” shares Laird. “Within a half hour, I felt awful, but thankfully, we were already descending toward the airport. I managed to make it through Customs and get home, but I was so sick for the next 24 hours after that. I later wrote the airline to alert them, and they responded that I was the only one from the flight who had reported feeling ill, so they felt it unlikely that their onboard meal was the culprit.”
What Should Passengers Do if They Feel Sick Onboard?
First, they should alert the crew. If the flight hasn’t yet left the gate, their best option may be to stay on the ground until they feel better.
“Usually, if a passenger comes onboard and claims to feel sick, we’ll encourage them to take a later flight. There’s nothing worse than being sick on a long flight that’s 100% full,” explains Heather Poole, a flight attendant for a major U.S. airline and author of Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet.
Flight attendants are trained to provide basic first aid and treat symptoms of illness to passengers who appear to be ill onboard their flights, but they are not trained to diagnose sick passengers.
“If a person tells us in flight that they feel nauseous, we’ll do what we’re trained to do for that, which might include giving them a couple of air sick bags or turning the air vent on them, and handing them a room temperature ginger ale to sip,” adds Poole.
In more serious cases (which they can identify with the help of a checklist), they can dial a satellite uplink to contact a ground-based medical doctor who can instruct flight attendants and any medical volunteers among the passengers on the flight. It’s worth noting that while some forms of foodborne illness can occur as little as 30 minutes after consuming the foods, diagnosis requires lab tests analyzed by a medical professional, so it won’t be clear whether an onboard malady is the result of contaminated food—particularly if other passengers are not demonstrating symptoms.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) outlines five symptoms of food poisoning: inability to keep liquids down, bloody diarrhea, dehydration, fever higher than 102, or diarrhea for more than three days. Passengers with these symptoms intending to travel on an aircraft should see a physician to be cleared for travel. If these symptoms develop onboard, they should see a doctor as soon as possible upon arrival after alerting the flight crew so they can be monitored throughout the flight.
How Airlines Prevent Foodborne Illnesses
On U.S. domestic flights, airline meals have become more limited than they were in the past. In coach, many meal items are pre-packaged and often shelf-stable. However, airlines still serve meals in premium cabins on domestic flights and in all cabins on long-haul international flights, and they go through exhaustive processes to keep food at the correct temperatures until they’re served.
Food safety controls onboard aren’t as exhaustive as they are in catering kitchens, where chefs check internal cooking temperatures and ensure sanitary chilling and holding of meals.
Airline meals are typically prepared up to 24 hours prior to the flight’s departure, assembled into trays, and loaded onto carts. The carts are kept chilled until they’re loaded onto trucks and delivered to the aircraft, where they’re slotted into chillers or loaded directly into convection ovens onboard.
Flight attendants are trained in maintaining sanitary conditions onboard, generally handling the food itself as little as possible, aside from perhaps removing the foil off a baking dish before serving it to passengers. However, food safety controls onboard aren’t as exhaustive as they are in catering kitchens, where chefs check internal cooking temperatures and ensure sanitary chilling and holding of meals.
It’s also worth noting that with few exceptions, most airline meals are loaded onto the aircraft mostly already cooked, and the convection ovens onboard only serve to return hot foods to a palatable temperature (some items like steaks are cooked about 75% of the way in the catering kitchens to ensure they’re not overcooked when reheated onboard), so there’s much less margin for error than there would be if foods were actually cooked onboard (some airlines cook a small number of items to order–like eggs–in their premium cabins).
How Can Passengers Prevent Foodborne Illnesses While Traveling?
Foodborne illnesses—including food poisoning, which is caused by a specific toxin—can occur anywhere in the world. Food is generally safe if it has been handled properly, mostly with proper, sanitary storage and cooking to a temperature that will kill any toxins it may contain.
INSIDER TIPConsider the food you eat both at the airport and onboard your flight. When in doubt, opt for meat-free meals or pre-packaged snacks that haven’t been handled.
Travelers should exercise caution when consuming uncooked or undercooked shellfish, meats, eggs, or dairy, but that doesn’t mean they should completely avoid Caesar salads (which contain raw eggs) or steak tartare (raw beef) when traveling. They might make a judgment call based on whether the restaurants where they’re making their selections appear generally well-maintained and thoroughly cleaned.
Foodborne illnesses, while generally rare in industrialized countries, are difficult to avoid entirely, and they’re no fun to get—especially if they require hospitalization or travelers encounter them in the uncomfortable confines of a commercial aircraft with small lavatory facilities and limited medical assistance available.
If they do find themselves unwell while aloft, they can rest assured that cabin crews are extensively trained to ensure their comfort and safety, and expert medical assistance in the more extreme cases is usually just a phone call away.
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