Food Poisoning on Airlines

[9V-SIA]

Has anyone had food poisoning on board an airline?

I did recently. First time in my flying career and I was traveling F no less.

Clear cut case as it was a 9am departure and my last meal was dinner.

What compensation did you receive if any?

They offered to pay for my medical bills. None incurred.

Alway travel with anti diarrhoeal meds. Vomiting? Take it like a man!

Their explanation:

Food is produced in batches. I was the only one to have complained.

Conclusions:

I think you'd receive better compensation if IFE broke down!

[Kyo]

I got sick on TG BKK-MUC in F (no less, as well)...

I sucked it up and threw up, 4 hours later (and still 4 hours to go before arrival), I was perfectly fine again. Still not sure which course threw me over the edge...

[kpc]

Unless a number of passengers got food poisoning, it will be very difficult to prove that the airline food was responsible...hope you feel better!

[Lobster]

Sorry but there is no way of knowing where you got the food poisoning from. Depending on what the bug is that has caused it ,then it can take up to 36 hours for the effects to begin.

[Savage25]

Sorry but there is no way of knowing where you got the food poisoning from. Depending on what the bug is that has caused it ,then it can take up to 36 hours for the effects to begin.

Agree...well, up to 48 hours.

[9V-SIA]

Sorry but there is no way of knowing where you got the food poisoning from. Depending on what the bug is that has caused it ,then it can take up to 36 hours for the effects to begin.

Agree...well, up to 48 hours.

While it can take up to 48 hours to present, most cases of food poisoning happen within 24 hours.

In my case, the main course tasted & smelled "off" and I didn't finish it.

I brought it to the attention of the IFS.

It was a pretty miserable flight.

I asked for some air sick bags before disembarking and was given 8!

I used 4 of them in London.

Hard to Diagnose Food Poisoning

The standard reply ( I'm told by friend ) is:

• they investigated my complaint
• food is produced in batches
• no one else who ate my batch complained about food poisoning Therefore batch was OK???
• they offer goodwill compensation. In my case, medical bills were zero.

.

I mentioned I didn't want compensation.

My problem was that mine was a "special meal order" so AFAIK nobody on the plane had ordered it

All I wanted to know was when my food was prepared.

This, they were unwilling to reveal

My flight was Monday morning 9am and I suspect my Japanese meal had been prepared on Sunday afternoon for the evening departures. Certainly tasted very stale...

So no more special order Japanese meals for me while flying. Ruined holiday..

[Savage25]

While it can take up to 48 hours to present, most cases of food poisoning happen within 24 hours.

In my case, the main course tasted & smelled "off" and I didn't finish it.

I brought it to the attention of the IFS.

It was a pretty miserable flight.

I asked for some air sick bags before disembarking and was given 8!

I used 4 of them in London.

Hard to Diagnose Food Poisoning

The standard reply ( I'm told by friend ) is:

• they investigated my complaint
• food is produced in batches
• no one else who ate my batch complained about food poisoning Therefore batch was OK???
• they offer goodwill compensation. In my case, medical bills were zero.

.

I mentioned I didn't want compensation.

My problem was that mine was a "special meal order" so AFAIK nobody on the plane had ordered it

All I wanted to know was when my food was prepared.

This, they were unwilling to reveal

My flight was Monday morning 9am and I suspect my Japanese meal had been prepared on Sunday afternoon for the evening departures. Certainly tasted very stale...

So no more special order Japanese meals for me while flying. Ruined holiday..

Even "special meals" are prepared in batches in SATS - they know which flights that particular batch went to, so they can check if anyone else from that batch complained of food poisoning.

The reason they were unwilling to tell you when the food was prepared is understandable. At SATS the food is blast-chilled as soon as its prepared, so it doesn't really matter whether it was prepared 2 hours or 2 days before your flight - you wouldn't be able to tell whether one or the other was "stale" as bacteria doesn't build as quickly under blast-chilled conditions as in regular freezing. Of course, there are those who will choose to believe that food prepared 2 days before can never be as fresh as food prepared 2 hours ago, which is why they choose not to tell the public.

I'd still put my money on you picking up the food poisoning somewhere else. You're more likely to get food poisoning from home-cooked food than from a Changi SATS meal.