Passengers on a Delta Air Lines flight Tuesday were showered with maggots falling from an overhead bin after a fellow traveler brought rotting fish in their carry-on luggage, according to several posts on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The flight was headed to Detroit from Amsterdam when the plane was forced to turn around an hour after departing. Passenger Philip Schotte told WJBK-TV in Detroit that he saw a woman across the aisle “trying to kind of fight off these maggots.” He initially thought it was a “prank.”
“I don’t really know what was going through my mind. I was trying to process it – disgust is one thing of course,” Schotte said.
Flight attendants tracked the bugs to an overhead compartment were they found a rotting fish wrapped in newspaper inside one of the bags.
“I did see everyone’s reaction to the bag being opened, which was just an immediate pinching of the nose,” Schotte told the station.
The airline confirmed the incident aboard flight DL 133 in a statement to NBC News, saying the bag had not been packed correctly.
“We apologize to the customers of Flight 133 on Feb. 13 as their trip was interrupted due to an improperly packed carry-on bag,” Delta said. “The aircraft returned to the gate and customers were placed on the next available flight. The aircraft was removed from service for cleaning.”
According to the flight tracking site FlightAware, the flight left Amsterdam at 10:11 a.m. local time and returned to the same airport less than two hours later at noon.
Airlive, the aviation news site, reported the carry-on bag was placed into another bag and burned.
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