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Hold The Mayo ... Please
James Wysong · June 27, 2004

It was the day after Bastille Day, and we had to work a full flight from Paris to Los Angeles with hangovers. The whole crew had joined in the previous night's celebration, and nobody held back from the free-pouring wine. Of course the air conditioner in the airplane wasn't working yet, so everyone was hot and sweaty.

As a treat, airport catering brought on a crate of Independence Day snacks for the crew and passengers. It was full of incredibly delicious prawn sandwiches. We were starving because our hangovers were wearing off, and hunger was setting in. We ate as much as we could handle, and then passed what was left out to the passengers.

We finally took off and the air conditioning kicked in. The snacks had seemed to cure the hangovers. The blurred details of the previous night celebrations were the topic of conversation, and the flight improved with time.

We teased Tammy, one of the flight attendants, because she had been so drunk at the festivities that she had joined a couple of locals in a total striptease. It was bizarre, because she was one of the shyest girls I had ever flown with prior to this flight. She wouldn't forget that night for a while, no matter how hard she tried.

Two hours into the flight, we were half way through our meal service when I saw Tammy holding her stomach, grimacing with pain. I was on the meal cart in the other aisle. She continued to work, when all of a sudden she dropped a tray. She quickly left her cart and ran down the aisle for the nearest toilet.

I watched with concern and horror as she made it only as far as the last row. She didn't throw up in front of the last row; she threw up all over the last row, and all of its occupants.

I quickly helped to clean things up, trying to appease the passengers, but how do you appease someone that has just been sprayed with projectile vomit? We put Tammy in the crew rest area and tried to resume the service. Fifteen minutes later the flight attendant who replaced her started to go pale. Slowly, more and more people started to become sick.

It was like an epidemic.

I called the cockpit to inform the captain of the dangerous situation that was arising. One of the pilots up front had also taken ill. Something was wrong. Hangovers aren't contagious. It had to come from something, but the only thing that we'd eaten or served was…the sandwiches.

The captain declared an in-flight emergency and told us that the nearest landing point would be New York in approximately 90 minutes. I got off the phone with the captain and went to brief the crew, but most of them were in the toilets, sick.

There were long lines for every restroom, and we were running out of sick bags. The only flight attendants still around were Sarah, who was a vegetarian and had not eaten the sandwiches, and myself, but I was fading fast.

I made an announcement informing the passengers of our deviation plans for New York, and the probability of the snacks being the culprit. I also suggested that those passengers who were not sick should pass their sick bag to their nearest neighbor who was ill.

When we ran out, I recommended using their pillowcases. Everybody kept handing me their dripping, used parcels, but I couldn't take them, because I had nowhere to put them all. I was going to bring a large trash bag around to collect them but by that time I had become sick and ended up throwing up into that bag.

We landed in New York, greeted by at least 50 ambulances and paramedics. We were all rushed to various hospitals along with the only uneaten prawn sandwich (I was saving it for later) for analysis. It was, in fact, the mayonnaise, that was the culprit - not the shrimp, as we had suspected.

There was a detailed investigation, afterwards, into the incident. They discovered that the sandwiches were for a flight that should have left the day before, but had been cancelled.

Oops.

The heat had 48 hours to spoil the mayonnaise and shrimp. No lawsuits ever saw the light of day due to the uncertainty of blame.

It's a funny memory, now that I can look back on it without gagging. But to this day, I can't eat any form of shrimp-based foods, and I am sure that the one statement everyone aboard that flight now has in common when ordering a sandwich is:

"Hold the mayo…please."

James Wysong has worked as a flight attendant with two major international carriers during the past fifteen years. He is the author of the "The Plane Truth: Shift Happens at 35,000 Feet" and "The Air Traveler's Survival Guide." For more information about Frank or his books, see his Web site or e-mail him.