Be it engine failure, inextinguishable fire or smoke situation or acute medical cause, flights have many a time been seen making emergency landings. But how often have you heard of a flight making a forced landing after passengers see lice in someone’s hair? Weird, isn’t it? This is what happened in a New York-bound American Airlines flight travelling from Los Angeles in June. The aircraft made the landing in Phoenix after passengers spotted lice crawling in a woman’s hair mid-air.
According to People, one of the passengers, Ethan Judelson shared his experience on TikTok and narrated the confusion that had panned out on the flight mid-air. Judelson said that the crew members provided limited information to them about the diversion. This led to further uncertainty among the passengers.
“I look around, no one’s on the ground, no one’s freaking out. I’m like, it can’t be that dire. But we land, and as soon as we land, this woman across the aisle from me shoots up and rushes to the front of the plane,” Judelson explained in his video.
Judelson further added that they were given $12 of spending money by the airline. “Right when we land in Phoenix we all get the email saying, ‘Here’s your voucher for the hotel.’ And we’re like, ‘Hotel, are we staying here?'”
In a statement issued to People, an American Airlines spokesperson noted, “On June 15, American Airlines flight 2201 with service from Los Angeles (LAX) to New York (JFK) diverted to Phoenix (PHX) due to the medical needs of a customer.”
While other passengers hardly knew what was happening, two women were of the opinion that ‘it was in the best interest of everyone’. “They were like, ‘Let’s just say it was in the best interest of everyone here that they did this. It’s for the safety of the plane’,” Judelson noted.
The TikTok user informed the news portal that he found out about the actual incident the following day by ‘word of mouth’. As he waited in the TSA line, he overheard other passengers discussing the cause for landing in Phoenix. He said, “I heard them talking about it again, and then tapped them on the shoulder and was like, ‘Did you say lice?'”
The passengers informed Judelson that they knew of the situation and their flight was grounded because of the lice incident. “Apparently those two girls, they saw bugs crawling out of the woman’s hair … and alerted the flight attendant,” Judelson added.
As passengers boarded the flight again, Judelson was unsure about who all actually knew about the lice as American Airlines didn’t issue any official statement during their 12-hour layover in Arizona. They were also allotted the same seats.
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