According to reports, an appalled airline customer was forced to sit in another passenger’s blood and diarrhea for the seven-hour journey before being offered wet wipes to tidy up the mess.
Habib Battah was on an Air France flight from France to Canada with his wife when they detected a strange odor emanating from the footwell beneath their seats.
The couple’s two cats, each in their own carrier, were stowed away in the footwell before them on the Boeing 777 flight. They were relocating from Lebanon to the United States so that Battah, a writer, could take a temporary teaching position.
Battah thought the cats had defecated, and so he became embarrassed. It was their first time flying with them. Then he thought it might be someone’s sweat.
Battah got on the ground on his knees to make sure the animals were doing well. He then saw a damp spot on the floor about 20 inches long and broad underneath the cat carriers, and so alerted a nearby flight attendant.
Battah said that it had a “shit” odor. Wet wipes were given to him, and as he began to wipe, he saw a blood-red color. The flight attendant told him to wash his hands, and then she gave him a pair of gloves.
A report shows the flight attendant informed her coworkers, and the captain phoned Paris to inquire about the stain.
According to Battah, Air France headquarters explained that the fluid was human blood because the male traveler had experienced a hemorrhage the day before on a journey from Paris to Boston. The passenger survived.
The captain had asked for the area to be disinfected before the aircraft returned to the French capital. However, the workers failed to clean the floor.
According to his biography, Habib Battah is the founder of the news outlet BeirutReport.com and works as an investigative journalist. Battah is a professor of media and journalism studies at the American University of Beirut and has spent more than 15 years reporting on Lebanon and the Middle East.
