A woman has apologised to hundreds of passengers after she thinks that her episode of 'biohazard diarrhoea' cancelled their flight.
Meghan Reinertsen (@meghanreinertsen) took to TikTok to tell her followers how she 'personally got a United flight cancelled' last year.
The writer and actor's catastrophic bout of illness began when she was travelling on a series of flights from Portugal back to the US for a film premiere.
After waking up for the Newark leg, the content creator felt unsettling stomach cramps, but her plan was to power through customs, baggage claim, and security.
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The delayed connection gave her a few minutes in the restroom, yet she claims nothing happened because her symptoms were still 'brewing'.
Upon boarding the Indianapolis flight, the cramps escalated into intense, full-body pain.
Although she was initially too nervous to break the seatbelt rule, Meghan eventually recognised her stomach pain was a real emergency and rushed to the tiny airplane bathroom.
For the next 20 minutes, she suffered from relentless diarrhoea, matched with sudden nausea.
Unsure where to vomit in the small sink, she finally flung the door open mid-flight, yelling for help.
A flight attendant pushed her back into the bathroom with a plastic bag, where she spent the next hour and a half alternating between vomiting and diarrhoea.
After landing, the rest of the passengers emptied the plane, and Meghan was informed that the next flight had been cancelled.
In that moment, she didn't think it was because of her, but then soon came to the conclusion that it might have been.
"I am a biohazard. I am patient zero," she said.
"They have to wheel me off this flight. I can't walk. They gotta get me in a wheelchair. They wheel me to baggage claim, but the bags haven't come yet.
"So they just drop me off the baggage claim. Now here I come rolling up. Everybody on my flight is like, that girl right there just pooped for two hours in our plane.
"And I gotta get my bags. I got two full suitcases. I have been in Portugal for two weeks."
She believes that an undercooked burger she ate in Portugal the night before flying may have been the problem.
Once she collected her luggage, the TikToker opted to stay in Newark and picked up the rental car she’d already reserved.
She then drove to a nearby hotel to recover before eventually making it to the film premiere.
Thankfully, Meghan was able to fly home to Atlanta after the premiere, despite looking 'snatched'.
A United Airlines spokesperson told Metro: "This incident occurred in July 2024. Our flight crew is trained to assist customers in situations like this and helped as much as they could during the flight and upon arrival in Indianapolis."
Anish Vij