Family Forced To Sit Near Pool Of Vomit On Jet2 Flight To Avoid 12-Hour Delay

A family of 11 were forced to sit next to a pool of vomit because Jet2 said it would cause a 12-hour delay if they cleaned it up, The Sun reported Wednesday. The airline carrier also did not want to refund the passenger the cost of her July Mediterranean getaway, which set her family back more than $10,000. The 4-hour flight was traveling from Paphos, Cyprus to Manchester.

When International Business Times contacted Jet2 for comment, they didn’t respond to a question about reimbursement. Instead, they provided a statement from the company’s spokesperson that said: “We would like to apologies for this isolated incident. Our cabin crew did their best to clean the affected area during the time the aircraft was on the ground in Paphos, ensuring that the flight was not delayed, for the convenience of all customers on board.”

But the apology seemingly didn’t do much to help passenger Keeley Casewell and her family.

“My family were on row 19 and the sick had spread to under my six-year-old daughter's seat. The sick was just covered with tissue and they were piled quite high over it,” the traveler told The Sun. “I couldn't see any clear attempts to clean it up properly. I asked the air hostess if she could move our seats but she just said no. I do understand that there may have been nowhere to move me to but she could have explained that.”

Casewell continued, saying not only were they uncomfortable, they were hungry. “All together my family spent around £8,000 [$10,000] on the whole holiday so you'd think that we would receive better service. You wouldn't expect there to be sick underneath your seat on any flight,” she said. “My kids were completely put off their food, they were crying because of the smell and because they were so hungry. They had to hold their noses throughout the flight. We had to leave our hotel at seven in the morning and the breakfast there didn't start until half an hour later so we told the kids we would get something at the airport.”

The family didn’t eat earlier because they planned to purchase food on the flight. “The food at the airport wasn't great so I thought we'd buy something on the plane but the kids couldn't stomach eating anything. We were on the plane for four hours and the smell was just getting worse… I know that passengers can't control it if they feel sick but surely the staff should have the facilities they need to clean it up,” she said.

While the crew apparently tried to clean up the mess, they didn’t do it properly.

“The attendants said that they had tried to clean it up with the salts but you could tell they hadn't,” Casewell explained to The Sun. “There were huge clumps of it on the floor still. My partner even offered to clean it up for them but they wouldn't let him. I was told that if they had to clean it up there would have been a 12-hour delay, to be honest I'd rather have had the delay.”

Aside from being gross, siting near vomit could have caused someone to get sick.

“It could have been a sickness bug so someone on the plane could have become ill from it,” the passenger said. “It's a very closed environment on the plane so there could have been all sorts of germs floating around. The air hostess told me that it wasn't a sickness bug as she had been told by the person who was sick.”

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