It was a genuinely awful landing. A passenger aboard Delta Air Lines has publicly voiced their strong dissatisfaction after being seated next to a foul-smelling traveler who allegedly soiled themselves during a five-and-a-half-hour flight from Florida to Los Angeles, California. The ordeal was described in a Reddit post titled “5.5-hour flight next to a human biohazard.”

At first, the flyer believed the journey would be uneventful — it was a direct flight, after all. But things took a turn when the older gentleman boarded: the poster explains he required airline assistance, had no companion, and was seated right next to them. From that moment on, the passenger says they became essentially “window-seat-prisoned” for the entire duration. “Turns out he had some serious mobility issues, which meant I was effectively window-seat-prisoned for 5.5 hours,” they recalled.
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The nightmare deepened: “Every breath was a gamble,” the passenger wrote, as flight attendants repeatedly checked in on the man and attempted to manage the situation. Upon landing, the poster recounts, the seat-mate abruptly stood up — against instructions — and the true horror revealed itself: “There were literal poop smears on the seat. And on him,” they said. “I had spent an entire cross-country flight marinating in that odor.”
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When the traveler disembarked, one of the flight attendants reportedly offered an apology: “I’m so sorry you had to deal with that. Why didn’t you ask for a mask?” the attendant said. To which the passenger wryly responded that what they actually needed was an exorcism.

Delta later issued an apology, recognizing that the flight experience “didn’t live up to” their standards of providing “reliable and thoughtful service at every moment of your travel journey,” and offered 5,000 miles as compensation. The poster called the gesture “nice,” but added that they probably “deserved therapy and several showers.”

Many Reddit commenters considered the compensation insufficient. One wrote: “5,000 is about $50… literally nothing. I feel bad for that guy though.” Another questioned how properly the seat was cleaned: “I want to know if they removed the entire contaminated seat before the plane departed again, or did the cleaners just spray it with Lysol? This is a literal biohazard.”