A passenger on a 5 a.m. Spirit Airlines flight ordered the Ghirardelli hot chocolate – and became almost immediately ill with sweat, vomit, and severe diarrhea for the rest of the flight.
Within minutes, she says she was drenched in sweat and consumed by anxiety. She says she was feeling intensely nauseous despite having zero history of motion sickness. She says she asked the flight attendant for a bag. …Five minutes later, she threw up.
@racheldont As if I needed another reason to never fly spirit again #spiritairlines #foodpoisoning #flying #traveling ♬ original sound – Racheldont
Some ultra-low cost carriers offer a quality product you can pay for. Since you’re paying extra for everything, they need to offer value to convince you to pay. Volotea’s butter chicken on an hour and a half flight is a perfect example of this.
Spirit Airlines offers an assortment of snacks for purchase and since they’re trying to get you to buy them the options are considered pretty good by many. My seven year old loves them (though they’re not as much to my taste as the Volotea butter chicken).
The idea of Ghiradelli hot chocolate on a plane sounds pretty good in theory, until realizing it’s an instant hot chocolate packet with water added, not someone reducing down real chocolate over a stove and mixing in cream.
Spirit isn’t Angelina’s on the Rue di Rivoli (next to Le Meurice Hotel), which while an absolute tourist trap offers some of the best hot chocolate you’ll ever try. I was first turned onto it over a decade ago by the Emmy-winning co-writer of the Oscars who used to pair with Billy Crystal. Artie Lange, from MADtv and the Howard Stern Show, who took the same recommendation said that the place “changed his life.”
Making hot chocolate with tank water, though? Airline tank water is disgusting. Spirit’s tank water just received a ‘D’ grade in an evaluation of regulatory filings, ahead only of JetBlue and American (and with the same overall grade).
Ultimately, disinfecting water tanks annually does not appeal to me. I choose not to drink the coffee, and that goes even for United’s Illy. I don’t brush my teeth on long haul flights with water from the lav sink! I bring a bottle of water in with me.
Best I’m skeptical that was the cause of this woman getting sick.
- The fastest food poisoning comes from toxins that still take over half an hour to go into effect, like Staph toxin (30 minutes to 8 hours) and Bacillus cereus (30 minutes to 6 hours).
- She was served hot water. That doesn’t guarantee safety (toxins can be heat stable), but it does make reduce the chances that live bacteria from the tank immediately attacked her.
- Maybe it was the stress of her all-nighter, 5 a.m. flight, and empty stomach? Or an already-incubating virus or bacteria from something she’d eaten earlier on her night out?
- It could also have been something with the hot chocolate packet – this is less likely, but more than tank water affecting her within minutes. It could also have been the handling by the flight attendant.
I’d start with what were you eating and drinking during your all-nighter, and what led you into that situation followed by a 5 a.m. Spirit flight in the first place?
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