Oops: British Airways Crew Gifted Weed Gummies On Flight, End Up Hospitalized

Here’s a wild story… on the plus side, at least they only consumed these sweets after the flight?

Sweet gift from British Airways passenger backfires

Once in a while you’ll see passengers bring gifts for airline crews, as a small thank you for good service. The most common gift is something like cookies or chocolate.

Last week, on a British Airways flight from London (LHR) to Los Angeles (LAX), a passenger gave a bag of gummy bears to the crew, seemingly as a thank you. While the crew was on the bus to the hotel after landing in California, a few of them split some of the gummy bears, though started to not feel well.

After closer inspection, it was determined that these were actually edibles, with the package containing a staggering 300mg of THC. Three of the crew members reportedly consumed the bulk of the edibles, and started feeling totally out of control, and they became panicked and scared. As their symptoms became worse, they were ultimately taken to a hospital.

Those crew members couldn’t work the return flight the following day, but instead, were deadheaded back days later, as passengers. The airline is now reportedly looking for the passenger who gifted these gummies to the crew. While airline crews are drug tested, this crew isn’t in trouble, since it was an honest mistake.

In a statement, the airline said that “a small number of our crew reported feeling unwell at their hotel and have since recovered,” and “we sent a replacement crew to operate the return flight and there was no impact on our customers.”

I have so many questions about this incident…

On some level, there’s almost a humorous element to this story, as it sounds like something straight out of a movie. However, it really isn’t a laughing matter — if the crew had consumed these on the flight, then this could’ve become a really bad situation.

For that matter, 300mg of THC is a massive amount. If three people had consumed the entire bag, that would be an average of 100mg of THC per person, which is way beyond what anyone would want.

But I’m really curious about the motives here:

• First of all, traveling internationally with cannabis poses some risks and could lead to punishment, so that seems like a risky practical joke to play (not even accounting for the core issue of safety)
• What was the passenger’s goal with giving the crew these gummies? Did they think it was funny, did they assume the crew would read the label about the contents, or what?
• For that matter, were the gummies even in the original, sealed packaging? And if so, did the crew just not read the packaging?

Generally speaking, airline crews are allowed to accept packaged snacks as gifts, though they’ll typically mostly consume them after the flight, just to be on the safe side. One wonders if British Airways might now change its policy on crews accepting gifts, to prevent something like this in the future?

Obviously the passenger should’ve never given such a gift to the crew, but I do think crews should have some duty to actually read the label of what they consume, assuming it wasn’t in some sort of hidden packaging.

Bottom line

A British Airways crew had a bit more excitement than they bargained for, after a passenger gifted them gummies. What they didn’t seem to realize is that they were cannabis treats. Fortunately they only consumed them on the shuttle after the flight. Unfortunately the bag had 300mg of THC, causing some flight attendants to be sent to the hospital (though they were fine).

One certainly wonders what the passenger’s motive was in gifting these. For that matter, I also don’t understand if/why the crew didn’t read the packaging. But goodness, what a story!

What do you make of this British Airways crew cannabis story?