Health agency probing Air Canada vomit incident on Vegas-Montreal flight

"They had to leave the plane," says Susan Benson, onboard an Air Canada flight from Vegas to Montreal Aug. 26, as two passengers were escorted off because of a vomit-smeared seat. Health Canada is now investigating. Alyssia Rubertucci reports.

By The Canadian Press & Alyssia Rubertucci

The outrage sparked by a passenger incident involving a vomit-smeared airplane seat reflects a broader frustration with flight operations in Canada, travel specialists say.

Meanwhile, the country’s public health agency says it’s investigating the recent episode.

On Tuesday, Air Canada said it apologized to two passengers who were escorted off the plane by security after protesting that their seats were soiled — and still damp — ahead of an Aug. 26 flight from Las Vegas to Montreal.

“They clearly did not receive the standard of care to which they were entitled,” the airline said in a statement emailed to The Canadian Press. “Our operating procedures were not followed correctly in this instance.”

The Public Health Agency of Canada said it is in contact with Air Canada. It cited its mandate to ensure that anything brought into the country on conveyances ranging from planes to trains does not risk transmission of illnesses that can be spread via contact with bodily fluids.

“Blood, vomit and diarrhea may contain microorganisms that can cause disease. These fluids, and the surfaces that come in contact with them, should always be considered as contaminated,” the agency said in a statement.

In a Facebook post that has since gone viral, Susan Benson of New Brunswick said she was in the row behind the two women when she detected “a bit of a foul smell but we didn’t know at first what the problem was.”


RELATED: ‘Bit of a foul smell’: Woman says Air Canada made passengers sit in vomit-covered seats


The cabin crew had “placed coffee grinds in the seat pouch and sprayed perfume to mask” the odour, she said in the Aug. 29 post that had garnered a combined 8,100 reposts and comments as of Wednesday evening.

The middle seat was wet and dirty, Benson said in an interview, adding she saw vomit residue on the seatbelt. From her seat behind the women, she could smell it despite the perfume and coffee grounds.

The two women spoke with the flight attendant, explaining that their seats were wet and there was visible vomit residue, Benson observed.

“The flight attendant was very apologetic but explained that the flight was full and there was nothing they could do,” Benson wrote in her post.

In an interview with CityNews, Benson said the flight attendant called the supervisor.

“She just reiterated the same thing, ‘We’re so sorry. We just cleaned it. It’s only wet because we just cleaned it. We can’t move you. There’s no other seats. We’re so sorry.'”

The women were eventually given wipes and blankets, and “settled in as best as they could,” she said in the interview, but then a pilot came and knelt down at eye level to the women.

“He said very plainly and very clearly that they had two options: that they could exit the plane on their own accord, and rearrange their flights themselves, or security would escort them off the plane, and they would be placed on a no-fly list,” Benson said.

“They asked him again, ‘Pardon me, what?’. He repeated it again, word for word.”

“And when they asked him why, he said they were rude to the flight attendants,” she said.

Benson rejected the pilot’s characterization of the women’s behaviour.

“They were upset. But they were not rude. And there was no raised voices,” she said.

“They just were very firm that they cannot possibly sit in a wet seat that still has vomit residue in it.”

Aircraft never should have been dispatched, expert says

Benson said it’s unacceptable that the passengers were put in such a position. 

“I do find it very strange that — what is it, a year ago — that you had to wear a mask and had to sanitize and whatever. And now a year later, it’s fine to sit in vomit? That just seems ridiculous.”

John Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University, says the aircraft never should have been dispatched, given the “biological hazard” on board.

“What the heck are you doing?” he asked of the carrier. “Totally out to lunch.”

As for the threat of being put on a no-fly list, Gradek said: “You should never have wielded those hammers unless the conversation and the individuals were really considered a threat to the crew.”

Gábor Lukács, president and founder of Air Passenger Rights, said a lot went wrong in this episode.

“I would expect a reasonable person to have some sympathy for the passengers,” he said. “We wouldn’t want your friend, your son, your father to be sitting in a vomit for five hours, so why should this woman sit in vomit?”

Gradek says it is normal for accidents to happen on board airplanes.

“Air Canada carries close to 200,000 people a day, those situations do happen,” he said.

“Air Canada has procedures that have to be followed in order for us to make sure that that airplane is, in fact, safe and comfortable for people to fly in and it seems in this case, in Vegas, for whatever reason, whether it was flight time, duty days or whatever, the crew wanted to get this airplane going and they did every every effort to make sure that they minimize the ground time getting rid of the passengers off the airplane and get them to Montreal.”

Lukács said a there were many avenues to take before removing the passengers.

“The seat should have been cleaned before any passenger was aboard the plane. Second, the seat should have been cleaned, once the issue was discovered. Thirdly, the passengers agreed to kindly sit on some blankets, that should have been the end of it. Plus, an apology, the passenger and maybe some compensation for the inconvenience,” he said.

“If that is not deemed appropriate to seat passengers like when plane is full, then you would not remove them as passengers, but you would apologize to them and deny them boarding because those seats are not usable. Pay them, denied boarding compensation. Put them on the next available flight of the airlines at necessary hotels, meals and so on. The same way as if the flight had been oversold,” he added.

FILE – An Air Canada Airbus A330 approaches for landing in Lisbon, Saturday, Sept. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Armando Franca, File)

The outcry on social media sparked by the incident speaks to a degraded level of service perceived by Canadians after a year marred by frequent flight delays and lost luggage, said former Air Canada chief operating officer Duncan Dee.

“People’s patience is likely wearing thin,” he said.

“I think travellers can relate to those two travellers’ experience out of Las Vegas because they feel they’ve had their travels disrupted to a much greater degree than prior to (the pandemic).”

While photos of snaking lines and posts of passenger frustrations at Toronto’s Pearson airport popped up on social media over the summer, the chaos of overflowing terminals and luggage-clogged arrival areas that marked the 2022 travel season did not come to pass, due in part to more prepared players and fully staffed agencies and security contractors.

Crews under pressure to depart quickly due to schedules

Nonetheless, Air Canada ranked last in on-time performance among the 10 largest airlines in North America in July, a report found. Canada’s biggest carrier landed 51 per cent of its flights on time that month, according to figures from aviation data firm Cirium.

“Last summer you had the three (largest) Canadian airports top the global charts for cancellations. This summer saw significant delays due to air traffic control,” Dee said. “The system simply has let travellers down.”

Of the latest incident, he added: “These seat cushions are removable.”

Most airlines contract third-party “groomers” that clean the seats and aisles between flights and have access to spare cushions to replace soiled ones “in relatively short order,” Dee said.

“You’ve got toddlers, infants, even adults who have certain accidents … it doesn’t happen every flight, but it certainly happens every day.”

But specialists say tight-packed schedules and flight delays squeezing turnaround times can put more pressure on crews to get back in the air as soon as possible.

“You’d be extending the ground time on the airplane to do the clean-up,” Gradek said, noting that crews have strict rules on their shift time, or “duty period.”

Last month’s incident wasn’t the first of the summer to involve seats and bodily fluids.

On June 30, a passenger on an Air France flight from Paris to Toronto said he sat amid the uncleaned remnants of a previous passenger’s hemorrhage, prompting a probe by the public health agency.

Of the latest incident, the agency said that if a complaint is determined to relate to a communicable disease “and the operator has not met the requirements of the Quarantine Act,” it could conduct an inspection and ultimately issue a fine to the operator.

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