‘Bloody, dirty plane’: Air France passenger endures 7-hr flight with smell of rotting blood

For seven hours, a journalist on an Air France flight had to endure the smell of rotting blood mixed with traces of faeces after the airline’s crew failed to thoroughly clean up when a passenger on a previous flight suffered a haemorrhage.

Mr Habib Battah is now talking to his lawyers to make Air France account for what he said was an “egregious” oversight.

Mr Battah was flying from Paris to Toronto on June 30 with his wife, Anna, and their two cats when he noticed an awful smell coming from the footwell in front of their seats. The cats were in separate carriers that were tucked into the footwell.

“It smelled like manure,” he said in an interview later with CNN.

He thought one of his cats might have soiled itself. But when he checked their carriers, he noticed that the carpet beneath was soaked in something red.

He flagged one of the flight attendants who handed him wet wipes.

“I started wiping, and it was red, blood red, and it kept coming up red. I was like, ‘What the hell is this?’ I just wanted to see what it was,” he said.

As Mr Battah was furiously cleaning the carpet, one of the pilots radioed Air France’s office in Paris, and he was told that a man on a Paris-Boston flight the day before had suffered a “haemorrhage”.

The pilot on that earlier flight had requested that the row where the passenger sat be cleaned, but the cleaners apparently forgot to scrub the floor as well.

Mr Battah noticed that the blood had seeped through one of his cat carriers.

He rued that only one flight attendant seemed flustered by what he, his wife and cats had to go through. The rest were indifferent.

They just gave him and his wife two small bottles of Evian water and two blankets from business class to put on the floor, with powder to soak up the blood, he said.

“We had to sit there smelling the blood for the next seven hours. The smell of rotten blood is like manure. I’d taken my shoes off at the start of the flight, and there was blood on my socks,” he said.

In fact, Air France told him later that the blood had been mixed with faeces.

Mr Battah told CNN that his flight was two flights after that of the man who suffered a haemorrhage.

Air France said in a statement to CNN that the seats’ cushions were replaced after the plane landed in Boston, but that the cleaning crew apparently failed to notice that the floor was also soaked.

“The plane returned to Paris, this bloody, dirty, sh**ty plane, and we got on it. That means other passengers were also exposed to it. I think they endangered their passengers’ wellbeing,” he said.

What was infuriating, he said, was the airline crew’s indifference.

“I brought that blood home. They sent me home with a biohazard,” he said.

Air France said “the risk of exposure to residual traces of blood on the carpet is low, if not non-existent”.

But Dr Richard Dawood, specialist in travel medicine at London’s Fleet Street Clinic, told CNN the plane should have been taken out of service until it could be deep-cleaned.

“The airline may only be considering the blood hazard, but mixed blood and stool is nasty, it gets everywhere. It’s easy to contaminate people’s hands and surfaces. I’d regard it as hazardous,” he said.

Mr Battah said Air France got in touch with him three days after his flight and offered to have his cats washed and suggested a US$500 (S$676) voucher.

He said he turned down the offer.

“I don’t think it’s right. I think it’s a serious biohazard and should be investigated thoroughly. I don’t want to be shushed with some change,” he said.

“Our airfare cost US$2,500,” he added. “Is a 20 per cent discount worth sitting in blood and faeces for? I think it was gross negligence and someone should be held accountable,” he said.