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Delta Airlines plane at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
Photo: Marcel Antonisse / ANP / EPA
It's hard to imagine: maggots falling out of the overhead compartment on an airplane onto passengers. According to various media, this happened on a flight from Amsterdam. The American airline Delta Airlines flew back to Amsterdam, the Dutch news agency ANP reported.
The plane was traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit in the USA and was already over England when maggots fell out of the overhead compartment after about an hour of flight - this is how passenger Philip Schotte described it to the agency. The animals came from a bag with rotten fish.
In a statement quoted by US media, the airline apologized to passengers for the fact that their journey was "interrupted due to incorrectly packed hand luggage." The aircraft returned and was taken out of service for cleaning. The passengers were rebooked on the next available flight.
According to his own statements, Schotte was sitting right next to a woman on whom the maggots had fallen. "At some point I saw that she was wiping maggots off her chair with a piece of paper," the ANP news agency quoted him as saying. "She was very scared." He and the woman then informed the cabin crew. The crew found the bag and wrapped it in plastic. Passengers reacted in shock and used the flashlights on their cell phones to see if there were any maggots crawling around, the Dutchman said, according to ANP.
kha/dpa