A United Airlines passenger has revealed that an undercooked hamburger caused the severe food poisoning that led to a flight cancellation in July 2024. Actress Meghan Reinertsen, 29, from Atlanta, Georgia, said she spent 90 minutes locked in the lavatory on a flight from Newark to Indianapolis after consuming a bloody patty hours earlier.
Reinertsen, who was returning from a family holiday in Portugal where she worked as a nanny, told the Daily Mail on Thursday that she bought the burger at the resort where she was staying. 'I only took a couple of bites because I was like, “oof, that’s really undercooked”,' she said.
The first signs of illness emerged as she walked through the airport before her final connection. Within 30 minutes of take-off, she was drenched in sweat, crying and doubled over in pain. She made it to the bathroom just in time, experiencing what she described as 'more diarrhoea than any human should ever have in their life', followed by vomiting.
Flight attendants allowed her to remain in the bathroom for the entire flight, securing special clearance from the pilot for landing. After the plane landed, she was informed that the next flight had been cancelled due to a biohazard. A hazmat team was called to clean up.
Reinertsen shared her ordeal on TikTok last month, where the video has been viewed more than 20 million times. She admitted the experience was so mortifying that she has struggled with travel since then.
