On June 15th, an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York was diverted to Phoenix shortly after taking off because passengers reportedly spotted lice crawling over a passenger’s hair. This resulted in the flight diverting, and all passengers were accommodated in Phoenix for the day.
Lice on a plane
While it is not as scary as the moving ‘Snakes On Plane’, having lice crawl around an aircraft cabin undetected can be an uncomfortable and chaotic experience for everyone onboard the airplane. As reported by Live And Let’s Fly, such an incident occurred onboard American Airlines flight AA2201, which is a scheduled service from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to New York (JFK) Airport.
On Saturday, June 15th, the flight (an Airbus A321neo) departed LAX at 13:54 (four minutes behind the scheduled departure); however, data from FlightRadar24.com indicates that the aircraft was back on the ground within two hours, just not at the intended destination. The report suggests that the flight was diverted to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX).
Though the airline did not explain the reason for the diversion prior to landing at PHX, according to the report, TSA agents on the ground explained that two passengers saw ‘bugs’ crawling out of a woman’s hair in flight and alerted the cabin crew.
Reports suggest that all the passengers were asked to disembark the aircraft and were provided with food vouchers and a hotel stay. The flight was scheduled to continue onwards to JFK the following morning, 12 hours later. The aircraft took off the following morning at 06:08, bound for JFK with all the passengers onboard, minus the passenger on whom the lice were reportedly detected.
Simple Flying has contacted the airline for more details about the diversion. Any response received will be updated in this article.
High-frequency route
Considering both LAX and JFK are major US cities, up to 30 daily flights serve this route, operated by three different carriers: American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and JetBlue.