‘Eurowings should be ashamed of how they handled this situation,’ says passenger
One thing in advance: Leah Williams was not forced to buy all packages of peanuts on board – on the contrary, our purser tried to offer her an alternative solution by informing all passengers sitting around her about Leah’s allergy. She agreed at first but then decided to still buy all the packages.
The airline says it is “unable to guarantee that the aircraft is free of foodstuffs that may trigger an allergic reaction, such as peanuts”, because passengers are allowed to bring their own food onboard.
I feel bad for her but I have to wonder, how does this person function on a day to day basis? If their allergy is so severe that other people eating peanuts around her would harm her, how does she leave the house? How did she navigate the airport?
Peanuts are not ubiquitous in public. Being near several people eating them in a fairly enclosed space is very different than walking through and airport and someone 25 feet away has a bag of peanuts.
The air within an airplane cabin is recirculated every five or ten minutes. A real severe peanut allergy would be triggered by anyone on the plane eating peanuts.
Yeah I had that thought too but if this were the case, would you take a life threatening risk that no one else on the plane has peanuts? Wouldn’t you drive instead? Or take a means of public transportation where they don’t regularly sell your allergen?
That’s not necessarily feasible. Maybe she has a schedule? Doesn’t have a car? Doesn’t have a license?
Also, some reactions are uncomfortable but not deadly. I have an anaphylactic allergy to tree nuts, as in, all true nuts (as peanuts are a legume, i’m fine with them). However, I’ve never had an anaphylactic reaction, though I was prescribed an EpiPen and told it could become worse with no warning. I get oral itchiness, stinging lips and mouth, heartburn, acid reflux, and diarrhea from actually eating nuts. I’m not sure what it is like for people who are sensitive to the airborne level. It might just resemb le environmental allergies like sneezing, red eyes and so forth. And if you do have to use an EpiPen, it’s painful to inject and then you have to go to the hospital afterwards. Not certain death, again, but uncomfortable and inconvenient.
I imagine she navigated those things with great difficulty and made the best decisions she could. She, like any other person with a medical condition or disability, exists in a world that usually will be hostile to her survival. Yet she must still exist within it. Sometimes people have to do things like take flights and rarely can someone afford to take measures that would best protect them (like a private flight or something in this case). Sounds like she didn’t want to announce her private medical information to everyone around her so she did what she could to keep safe, buy all the peanuts. Ideally she wouldn’t have to, peanut allergies are pretty well known and if we cared about increasing access for people not having peanuts for sale on planes is a pretty simple step. Until then people will keep being put into scenarios like this then scrutinized for the choices they make.
