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A man and his wife were disgusted after making a horrifying discovery while flying on an Air France flight from Paris to Toronto. Habib Battah told CNN that he started smelling something like manure when he sat down in his seat.
At first, Battah thought it was his cats who were traveling with him and his wife.
"It was our first time traveling with the cats, and I was thinking, 'Oh god, they've had an accident. I'm so embarrassed," Battah said. "Then I thought, maybe it's someone's body odor. I was sniffing and sniffing, then said, let me get the cats out."
But, when he checked on his cats, he noticed the carpet underneath his seat was damp. He alerted a member of the flight crew, and they gave him some wet wipes to clean up the mess.
"I said it smells like merde – s***. She handed me wet wipes. I started wiping, and it was red – blood red. And it kept coming up red. I was like, 'What the hell is this?' I just wanted to see what it was. After a while, one of the flight attendants said, 'You'd better go wash your hands, and here are some gloves.'"
During the flight, the pilot was told that the stain underneath his seat was human blood. A passenger on a previous flight suffered a "hemorrhage" and required medical 0attention.
"I didn't know it was blood until a flight attendant said, casually, 'Oh, we heard another passenger had a hemorrhage,'" Battah said. "Then I noticed the cat carrier was stained as well."
Unfortunately for Battah and his wife, the flight was fully booked, so they were forced to remain in their seats for the seven-hour flight. The flight crew did put some blankets over the stain, but Battah said it didn't help mask the smell.
"We had to sit there smelling the blood for the next seven hours," he said. "The smell of rotten blood is like manure. I'd taken my shoes off at the start of the flight, and there was blood on my socks."
After the flight, Battah said the airline did nothing as he left the airport.
"I brought that blood home. They sent me home with a biohazard. They never stopped me and said, 'Hey, we don't know what this patient had [wrong with him].' It was so negligent," he said.
To make matters worse, Air France contacted him a few days later and said the stain contained feces.
Battah was livid after the incident and is demanding answers from the airline. So far, they only offered to pay to have his cats cleaned and offered him a $500 voucher.
He declined their offer and has been speaking to lawyers about his next steps.
"[The incident] was two flights before ours, so in Boston, the clean-up didn't happen. The plane returned to Paris, this bloody, dirty, sh**ty plane. And we got on it. That means other passengers were also exposed to it. I think they endangered their passengers' wellbeing," Battah explained.
"I started to ask, 'How do you not check? What are the protocols for biohazards?' I couldn't get them to tell me. It was as if there were none."
Battah shared several photos and videos of the stain on Twitter.