When you get on an airplane, there are a lot of things that you can reasonably expect could go wrong. Maybe your seatmate is too wide to fit in just one seat. Maybe a child will start crying. Maybe you’re forced to witness another passenger going to the bathroom barefoot. No one is going to enjoy experiencing any of those issues, but they’re also completely normal. On a recent flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, however, the Daily Mail reports that passengers had to deal with the completely unexpected problem of maggots falling onto them from the overhead compartment.
As it turned out, a passenger had brought a carry-on onto the plane that contained rotting fish. Fish that were so rotten that they had maggots in them. And for whatever reason, airport security in Amsterdam didn’t find a problem with that. Sure, the fish didn’t have any bombs in them, but you would think that the smell alone would have been enough for a security agent to stop the passenger from taking their bag onto the plane. After all, we’re talking about rotten fish full of maggots. There’s no way that bag didn’t stink to high heaven.
And yet, they were allowed to board the plane with their bag of rotten fish. At some point, the bag broke open and spilled maggots onto unsuspecting passengers who definitely didn’t have “maggots falling onto me from the overhead compartment” on their 2024 bingo card.
Once the maggots were discovered, the plane returned to Schiphol where the passengers were offboarded, and the suitcase was reportedly put in a bag to be burned. The Daily Mail also reports that according to a passenger named Kelce, the owner of the suitcase full of maggots and rotten fish was detained by security. It is not clear at this time whether the Kelce in question was Jason or Travis. Taylor Swift has also not commented on the incident.
Kelce also reportedly said that Delta gave passengers 8,000 SkyMiles, hotel rooms and a $30 meal ticket for those who were delayed overnight.
One Reddit user who claimed they were on the flight wrote:
My family and I were in the row directly in front of the maggots. The lady right behind us told the flight attendants the maggots were falling on her head. Ugh. I turned around and they were wiggling around on the seat.
They moved us further in front though. One of our carry-on bags was right nearby the disgusting one so at the end of the flight when I went to get it after checking it over thoroughly, the passenger in question was still sitting there and didn’t exit the plane.
Some kind of consequences but unclear what. Also apparently it was wrapped in newspaper. Absolutely gross.
Yes. Exactly. Absolutely gross. At the same time, though, the maggots falling from the rotting fish were probably less gross than the time a Delta passenger “had diarrhea all the way through the airplane.” So at least there’s that.