While many disgusting moments on different airlines have gone viral over the years, new ones never fail to tap into the internet’s salacious and can’t-look-away instincts.
The latest travel post to gather over four million views on TikTok occurred when an artificial intelligence startup founder posted an eight-second video of “unidentified liquid drips” over her seat in the back of a Southwest (LUV) – Get Free Report plane.
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“POV: unidentified liquid drips from someone else’s bag on you the entire flight because the flight attendant said she can’t move you or the bag,” 24-year-old Sophie Shaw wrote overtop the footage of water dripping from the overhead compartment above her flight.
Im filing a claim dw #southwest #flightattendant #flighthorrorstories #flying #travel #traveltiktok #plane
‘Filing a claim, don’t worry,’ traveler tells TikTok followers of experience
The entrepreneur, founder of AI company Azuryne, was using the airline to travel between San Jose, Calif. and Santa Ana, Calif. In the caption to the video, Shaw also told her followers that she was “filing a claim dw [don’t worry].” The eight-second footage is also accompanied by dramatic Halloween-style music culminating in a honking tun-tun-tun.
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The video had initially only been seen by Shaw’s friends but started gathering steam on the internet in January a few weeks after the incident. It has now been viewed nearly 4.5 million times and received over 136,000 upvotes.
In an interview with news outlet Kennedy News, Shaw explained that she was not able to move the bag herself due to being 5’2 and too short to reach it in the back of the overhead compartment while a Southwest flight attendant reportedly told her that she could neither move the bag nor put her in a different seat.
“It was the worst experience on a plane I’ve ever had,” Shaw described to the news outlet while also comparing it to “Chinese water torture” in reference to a fifteenth-century torture method in which water is dripped onto someone’s forehead slowly but consistently over a long period of time.
Commenters weigh in: ‘The flight attendant couldn’t just make an announcement?’
The San Francisco native also said that she had gone to sleep while waiting for the flight to take off but woke up when she felt her legs and seat “completely soaked” and discovered a “big drip coming from the ceiling.”
While Southwest has not been reaching out with responses to questions on how it handled Shaw’s situation, TikTok users quickly jumped in to express outrage on her behalf and criticize the airline’s actions even though the drip was most likely caused by a fellow passenger.
“I would’ve said so loudly ‘WHOSE BAG IS THIS!!!!'” one commenter wrote in a post that was upvoted more than 56,000 times.
“The flight attendant couldn’t just make the announcement asking who’s [sic] bag that was,” wrote another.
Shaw, in turn, later clarified that the flight attendants tried to fix it by putting some paper towels into the overhead compartment.
“They put some paper towels in the locker so I guess they had tried to fix something but couldn’t,” Shaw told Kennedy News. Southwest has not been reaching out to talk about its clean-up efforts or what caused the leakage.
