Vomiting and having diarrhea at the same time as 196 other people in a place with limited facilities sounds really awful. I can’t even imagine the chaos that would have ensued. What a logistical nightmare… those poor people!

It was found that three cooks [on land] had prepared the meals, one of whom had infected lesions on the index and middle finger of his right hand.[2] The lesions on the cook’s fingers were found to be infected with staphylococci. Tests revealed identical phage types and antibiotic resistances for all samples, indicating that the cook was the source of the contamination. … He had bandaged the lesions but not reported them to his superior, as he considered them trivial. Also, management had not verified that he was in good health, despite being required to do so …

… Prior to being served, the meals had been stored at room temperature in the kitchen for 6 hours, then refrigerated (albeit at an insufficient 10 °C (50 °F)) for 14½ hours and then stored in the aircraft ovens, again without refrigeration, for another 8 hours. Had the food been kept properly refrigerated from the time it was prepared until it was ready to be served, the outbreak would not have occurred.

Readers of Admiral Cloudberg will know that typically several things have to go wrong for aviation disasters to happen. In this case:

• the cook did not properly manage or report their hand injury
• the cook’s supervisor did not verify that the cooks were in good health
• the meals were not properly stored

It was just chance that the pilot and first officer had not eaten any of the contaminated omelettes, as the airline had no regulations regarding crew meals. As the pilots’ biological clocks were on Alaska time rather than European time, they had opted for a dinner of steaks instead of omelettes—had they not done so, they might not have been capable of landing the aircraft safely. [Health Department investigator Dr. Mickey S.] Eisenberg suggested that cockpit crew members eat different meals prepared by different cooks to prevent food poisoning outbreaks from incapacitating the entire crew, a rule subsequently implemented by many airlines.

What’s wild is this whole incident is basically the plot of Airplane! and the movie it remade, *Zero Hour! Airplane! was released in 1980, five years after the incident, but Zero Hour! was released in 1957 and based on a 1956 teleplay called Flight into Danger, all with the plot of an airliner full of food-poisoned passengers and an incapacitated crew. Or it would’ve been the plot had the pilots eaten the contaminated food.

I found a picture of the meals.

Japan Air Lines’ catering manager, 52-year-old Kenji Kuwabara, committed suicide upon learning that the incident had been caused by one of his cooks. He was the only fatality.

That seems like an excessive reaction! Poor guy.