Delta passenger ‘was freaking out’ when maggots fell on her during flight
A passenger on a maggot-infested Delta flight recounted the moment he set his eyes on a woman who was hit by the disgusting stowaways.
“She was freaking out,” Philip Schotte, who was aboard the infested flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Tuesday, told Fox 2 Detroit. “She was just trying to kind of fight off these maggots.”
He said he looked across the aisle and saw at least a dozen maggots tumbling onto the woman from the overhead bin.
Another passenger had placed carry-on – more like carrion – luggage stuffed with newspaper-wrapped fish into the reeking receptacle.
“I don’t really know what was going through my mind. I was trying to process it – disgust is one thing of course,” Schotte told the outlet.
“We had to wait there for help to actually come,” he added.
“They found out that there was a rotten fish in there,” Schotte, a Netherlands native who lives in Iowa, told the outlet. “I did see everyone’s reaction to the bag being opened, which was just an immediate pinching of the nose.”
The man who apparently placed the stinking seafood there then stood up and claimed it, according to the report.
“The passenger explained when he opened it there were fish in there. That’s the only word I heard from as far back as I was sitting, just the word ‘fish,’” Schotte told WXYZ.
“So I knew at that point there’s rotten fish in there, a bunch of maggots are coming from it.” He said.
The flight attendants took the foul cargo to the back of the plane and the pilot notified the passengers that they were turning back to Amsterdam.
Schotte got on another flight back to the US a few hours later.
He told the outlet that “turning the plane around was the right decision because I was five rows back and by the time we got to landing, one of the maggots had made its way to my row.
“I can only imagine what it would’ve been like had we been on that plane for seven more hours,” he added.
Delta did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Post.
In a statement to WXYZ, the airline said: “We apologize to the customers of flight 133 AMS-DTW as their trip was interrupted due to an improperly packed carry-on bag.
“The aircraft returned to the gate and passengers were placed on the next available flight. The aircraft was removed from service for cleaning,” it added.
A passenger named Kelce tweeted about the nauseating incident in a since-deleted post on X.
“Really lovely to be 2 hours into an 8 hour @Delta to Amsterdam and find out there is rotten fish and maggots hitching a ride with us,” wrote the user, who told the Daily Mail that the passenger responsible was later detained.
Kelce said the airline gave travelers 8,000 free miles, hotel room compensation, and a $30 meal ticket in case they were delayed overnight.
