Flight Attendant Refuses To Take Off Until Passenger Cleans Up Mess

A flight from Atlanta to Houston was delayed due to an unclaimed mess of food on the floor.

Flight attendants aboard the Southwest Airlines flight last weekend reportedly refused to let the pilot take off until a passenger cleaned up a pile of rice that spilled over into the aisle, passengers said per KHOU.

"I didn't see it happen, but apparently one of the last passengers to board spilled a large amount of what looked like some sort of Asian fried rice ... and the flight attendant was really, really, mad about it," passenger Jennifer Schaper told the news outlet. The flight attendant was apparently mad enough to keep the flight from taking off for about an hour. "She went up and down the aisle and asked each passenger one by one, loudly, who spilled the rice. My seatmates and I sort of got the giggles because it was so surreal. It was just hilarious. So she looked at us really suspiciously and asked us again if we spilled the rice and we said, 'No ma'am, we did not.'"

The passenger said the situation on the plane continued to get tenser and more awkward. Another flight attendant even came over to put a paper towel over the rice, saying "We are not leaving this gate until someone cleans up this rice." "It was the end of a long day and apparently they had had a complete crew change. I'm sure they were tired. There had been a delay and we were tired," Schaper added.

The flight attendant wound up cleaning the rice herself, but not without saying some choice words to the passengers, Schaper said. "The entire time she’s telling all the passengers how nobody was raised right, and how disappointed she is in all of us," she said.

A spokesperson from Southwest said they weren't aware of the incident, but said flight attendants "do a tremendous job ensuring the comfort and safety of their customers."

The spilled rice debacle comes days after Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass broke the internet after he posted a photo from a United Airlines flight in which he says a flight attendant forced his pregnant wife to "get on her hands and knees" to pick up popcorn her 5- and 2-year-old kids made. "Are you kidding me?!?!" he wrote on social media.

In more Texas airport news, an Austin-Bergstrom Airport employee was killed after a ground service vehicle struck a jet bridge.