First Class should be a comfortable, dignified and caring experience. You pay more, you get more a wider seat, better food, service, you don't expect to arrive at your destination with a stranger's bodily fluids on you. One Delta passenger, on a late-night flight from Minneapolis to Boise on June 5, had no expectation that last thing.

The passenger was laid on 2D on an Airbus A220 on flight Delta 2488, which had departed late and got her to sleep nearly as soon as it took off. Not to be blamed it was nearly midnight and the flight was on the verge of landing. Below her seat in front of her was her purse, just where you'd expect a bag to be during a short flight. Little did she know that the person sitting in front of her (1D) was also ill and had vomited during the flight. This passenger didn't seem to want to alert the crew to the situation, and the contents of that purse apparently fell down the cabin wall and into the open purse below.

The Discovery and What Was Damaged

Approximately five minutes before landing, she got down and pulled her purse into her lap. That's when she knew what to do. Vomit on the outside of the bag. Throw up in the bag. Now let's get on her and puke. Her purse, hat, and AirPods all have been poisoned. The AirPods were left in the seat-back pocket area and resting on the mess. There was also dried-up vomit on the wall next to her seat.

The flight attendant allegedly admitted to witnessing the 1D vomit in flight, but stated she did not know where it had gone. How did the crew member react to the situation? Clorox wipes.

The passenger then made a formal complaint to Delta. The airline's response to the good will: $50 travel voucher.

That response was neither adequate nor insulting for a biohazard event that affected several personal properties, exposed the passenger to the biohazard without her awareness and which occurred in the premium cabin of a commercial aircraft.

Where the Blame Actually Falls

The situation is complex and it's important to be precise about the responsibility of each party involved.

The focus is on the passenger in 1D. Becoming ill during a flight is involuntary and not blameworthy on its own it happens. What is bad, is not to mark the crew, not to accept the responsibility of the contaminated area, and letting another passenger sit in the contaminated area unknowingly for the rest of the flight. If vomit is left on someone else's land, it is the decent and responsible thing to do to get the crew involved and accept that is a problem. That didn't happen.

Delta's fault is more complicated, but still present. The flight crew knew that a passenger had been sick, but apparently failed to conduct a thorough investigation to determine the extent of the contamination. In that case, a good answer includes checking the affected area, offering appropriate protective equipment, and making sure that other passengers nearby are not unwittingly affected. None of that seemed to have happened until the afflicted passenger found out for herself five minutes before landing, and with little time to do anything for the purpose.

The $50 Voucher Problem

The highlight of this experience is Delta's $50 as compensation, and it's easy to see why this is the aspect that has garnered the most response. This leather bag, hat, AirPods, and purse rife with biohazard damage can cost several hundred dollars just to replace, plus another thousand or more for the replacement of all the contents. Those last few minutes of finding and dealing with it on a flight when you have no assistance other than wipes, and that $50 is a bit off-topic.

It's all the more interesting when put in context. In a separate incident, a British Airways customer who drank 10 mini-Bacardi bottles onboard a flight reportedly paid $50 to get the flight attendant to clean up the mess after he vomited on another passenger on one of their flights. It's a comparison that's not flattering. If so, the question was clearly raised as to whether the airline had played a role in the situation in its service decisions. The passenger here was just oblivious to what had taken place when the harm was inflected.

A Pattern Worth Acknowledging

This event is not an isolated one. Several passengers have reported unpleasant experiences on commercial flights involving vomit and were not satisfied with the way their airlines dealt with the incident:

• One Delta passenger, on another flight, was sitting in a vomit-soaked seat and was told to deal with the vomit herself, says a crewmember who was "very unhelpful".
• A woman on another carrier was arrested after she voiced her dismay over vomit in the seat she had booked, sparking comments of condemnation from across the country.
• One incident with British Airways involved a considerable amount of overservice which directly led to a passenger vomiting on a seatmate.In British Airways, considerable overservice was directly responsible for a passenger vomiting on a seatmate.

But the cabin of an aircraft is not a place where the airline is uniquely callous it's that the protocols for how to respond in a biohazard emergency seem to be inconsistent and sometimes inadequate, especially when a cabin situation also inflicts real damage on a passenger's property.

What a Better Response would look like

Having been in that last five minutes of a flight myself (strapped in a jump seat on descent), there are indeed limits to the things that can be done. The window for meaningful intervention was earlier in the flight when the crew is said to have known of the sick passenger but not completely determined the extent of the spread of contamination.

Obviously, a better response at the airline level post flight is:

• True acceptance of the situation, and its impact on the passenger(s) in question.
• Comprehensive reimbursement for the actual damages to property, rather than $50 voucher.
• A post flight analysis of the crew's reaction to a known biohazard condition and whether protocols were adhered to.

The $50 voucher and Clorox wipes response asserts, with or without awareness, that it is the airline's job to get the complaint over and done with rather than to make the passenger whole.

The Bottom Line

Moments before landing on a late night flight, a Delta first class passenger spied vomit in her open purse, which was innocently left there by the passenger in front of her. The leather bag, hat, AirPods and purse of the flight crew were all damaged and the flight crew's ‘solution' in flight was to wipe down the inside of the aircraft with Clorox wipes. A one-time Delta post flight compensation offer: $50. The main problem is the passenger's sickness, but he did not report it, nor take responsibility for the damage that has been caused. 

But Delta's treatment of the situation from take-off to landing is far below that of a reasonable man, especially a premium cabin fliers and especially a man whose financial loss is clearly greater than the dollar value in the voucher they are receiving.