A British woman who has a severe allergy to nuts claims she was forced to buy all 48 packets of nuts on a Eurowings flight to London because the cabin crew refused to stop serving the snacks to other customers.
Leah Williams, 27, had booked a €50 flight with Eurowings to take her from Dusseldorf to London, but when she got on board, she ended up spending three times the cost of her ticket to buy snacks she never intended to eat.
According to Leah, when she boarded the plane she initially told the cabin crew about her severe allergy to nuts and asked them not to sell nut-based snacks to other passengers. She also asked the crew to make an announcement asking her seatmates not to consume anything with nuts in that they had brought onboard.
Leah told the Mirror that the cabin crew ‘dismissed’ her concerns leaving her no option to buy all the packets of nuts onboard. With a ticket price of €3.50 each, Leah ended up spending €168 to buy all 48 packets of nuts onboard the aircraft.
“The stewards looked at me blankly like I was crazy and said, ‘But there is a lot, we’ll have to count them all,'”Leah told the newspaper.
“Eurowings should be ashamed of how they handled this situation and for the way they made me feel,” she continued.
Leah is now demanding Eurowings refund her the cost of buying the snacks, but the airline has a different take on what unfolded.
“On the contrary, our Purser offered her an alternative solution by informing all passengers sitting around her about the allergy. She also agreed with this at first, but then subsequently decided to buy up all packages from the on-board sale,” a Eurowings spokesperson told AeroTELEGRAPH.
The spokesperson noted that the airline, a budget subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group, cannot guarantee that other passengers won’t consume their own nut-based snacks and that other foods served onboard could contain traces of nuts.
In the UK, airlines cater extensively to allergy sufferers, allowing passengers to preboard so that they can wipe down their seat areas, removing nut-based products from sale or service and making announcements asking other passengers not to consume their own nut-based snacks.
Airline allergy policies can, however, vary massively around the world and regularly catch out Brit allergy sufferers who have come to expect accommodations for their needs.
While the vast majority of airlines don’t actively serve peanuts anymore, most European and U.S.-based airlines refuse to make announcements telling other customers not to consume their own nut-based snacks and will continue to serve nuts in premium cabins.
On flights to and from Canada, airlines are, however, required to provide a ‘buffer’ zone around passengers with a documented nut allergy.
Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since... most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt's industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.