Vomiting plane passenger causes LAX excitment

About six years ago I was flying from Toronto to Ottawa and after a particularly turbulent morning ride, I was looking a little green. Although the plane was preparing to land, the steward said, ‘you gotta go, you gotta go,’ so I experienced landing while kneeling at the airplane’s plastic throne.

No one figured I was contagious.

Not so in Los Angeles this morning.

United Airlines flight 890 arriving from Japan informed ground crews shortly before touching down at 8:30 a.m. that a 28-year-old man aboard the aircraft of more than 300 passengers was sick and might have some sort of virus.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Cecil Manresa said,

Los Angeles city paramedics and personnel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention boarded the Boeing 747 after it landed. It took about 20 minutes to determine that the passenger was not contagious, Manresa said.


"He had some kind of stomach ailment or food poising issue, and it was not a virus [or] an infectious disease," he said.

Manresa said that city paramedics, and not the CDC, generally respond when airline passengers complain of illness. But the unidentified man must have told the airplane’s crew something to make them think that his condition was more severe, he said.

All I said was, leave me alone.

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About Douglas Powell

A former professor of food safety and the publisher of barfblog.com, Powell is passionate about food, has five daughters, and is an OK goaltender in pickup hockey. Download Doug’s CV here. Dr. Douglas Powell editor, barfblog.com retired professor, food safety 3/289 Annerley Rd Annerley, Queensland 4103 dpowell29@gmail.com 61478222221 I am based in Brisbane, Australia, 15 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time