A United Airlines flight out of Indianapolis turned into an unforgettable — and very unpleasant — travel tale for one particular passenger.
Traveling can be stressful at the best of times, but have you ever been the reason a flight had to be canceled so the plane could be deep cleaned?
You couldn't torture this information out of me, but luckily, others have no issues in sharing their stories.
Meghan Reinertsen, a nanny and aspiring actress who swears she isn’t “a monster,” admitted she “single-handedly got a flight out of Indianapolis cancelled.”
In a TikTok confession that’s racked up more than 20 million views, she offered a heartfelt apology to anyone affected: “If that flight cancellation changed the trajectory of your life in a really negative way, I’m so sorry. But it wasn’t without pain and suffering.”
Reinertsen says the ordeal began as she was flying home from Portugal for a film premiere.
The night before, she’d eaten what she now believes was an undercooked hamburger — a decision that would come back to haunt her in a big way. “Something is brewing,” she recalled thinking mid-flight. “Something is happening that I am not prepared to deal with.”
That “something” was food poisoning, which, according to the Cleveland Clinic, is rarely fatal but can make you feel like you’re dying thanks to symptoms like severe vomiting and diarrhea.
As her stomach revolted, the seatbelt sign was still on — but Reinertsen knew she didn’t have time to wait. “I’m full body sweating, I’m crying, my insides are cramping,” she remembered. “I couldn’t let [an accident] happen to me.”
What followed was, in her words, “more diarrhea than any human should have in their life” — a 20-minute onslaught in the cramped airplane lavatory.
To make matters worse, she began vomiting too. A flight attendant handed her a bag, but the combination of mess and odor made the bathroom a no-go zone for other passengers.
Reinertsen stayed in the lavatory for the rest of the flight, alternating between diarrhea and vomiting. By the time the plane landed, the flight attendant informed her that the Airbus’s next journey had been canceled so the aircraft could undergo a deep clean.
Escorted off the plane in a wheelchair, Reinertsen was left to collect her baggage and deal with the aftermath alone.
But her misery didn’t end at the airport — she later had another round of diarrhea in her hotel bed, soiling the sheets.
Still, she says nothing topped the humiliation of grounding an airplane.
“They canceled that flight because of me. The hazmat team [had] to come in and clean it, because [they didn’t] know if I’d brought [a disease] back from Portugal,” she said. “I am a biohazard. I am patient zero.”
So there you have it - if your flight is ever canceled, just remember it might be because someone voided their bowels.