A Delta flight headed to Detroit from Amsterdam on 13 February had to make a U-turn about one hour after departing as maggots started falling on passengers’ heads.
“The lady right behind us told the flight attendants the maggots were falling on her head. I turned around and they were wiggling around on the seat… Absolutely gross”, one of the passengers on the flight wrote on Reddit.
Flight DL133 was supposed to depart Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and head to Detroit, in Michigan. Less than an hour after take-off however, passengers started reporting maggots falling on their heads.
“She was freaking out. She was just trying to kind of fight off these maggots. … I don’t really know what was going through my mind. I was trying to process it – disgust is one thing of course. We had to wait there for help to actually come”, Philip Schotte, a Dutch passenger sitting next to the woman who had the maggots fall over her told Detroit tv station Fox2.
The crew eventually came to the row in question and discovered one of the carry-on bags in the overhead bins contained several pieces of rotten fish wrapped only in newspaper. The flight attendants moved the bag to the back of the plane, moved the passengers in the maggot raining row to other available seats on the plane and announced the flight would be returning to Amsterdam.
The plane touched down back at Schiphol around noon after spending only one hour and 49 minutes in the air. All passengers disembarked and the airline said the plane, an Airbus A330-300, was thoroughly cleaned before being used for another flight.
“We apologize to the customers of Flight 133 AMS-DTW as their trip was interrupted due to an improperly packed carry-on bag”, Delta Airlines said in statement to the press. “The aircraft returned to the gate and passengers were placed on the next available flight. The aircraft was removed from service for cleaning.”
Passengers were offered alternative flights as soon as possible, as well as 8,000 air miles to their Delta accounts and, if they had to wait overnight for their next flight, they also received hotel room compensation and a $30 meal ticket.
