Flying on an airplane with a severe allergy to nuts

I was on a long haul flight a few years back and it had just come round to dinner time.

The food cart came round and I was asked the usual - meat or veggie… I went for meat.

I was served with an ambiguous looking chicken-potato dish (you know the kind) and before digging in I needed to know if it was safe for me, with severe allergies to nuts and peas, to eat.

The air host at the food cart didn’t know (?) so had to go and ask their superior, who came over and immediately began to question my allergies.

1. “Are you actually allergic or do you just not like it?”

2. “How serious are you allergies?”

3. “Do you have your medicine just in case?”
(shortly followed by “Well you can use it if there are nuts” 😦)

I could tell this wasn’t going well.

I just wanted a yes or no answer to a plain and simple question:

Did the meal they were serving contain ingredients that could kill me?

In the end, after much back and forth and no clear answer, the air host just looked at me and said:

“Good luck”.

Safe to say, I didn’t eat.

I’m bringing this up as very recently there have been a number of other incidents highlighting the lack of awareness and preparedness in airlines when it comes to dealing with allergies and anaphylaxis.

Some ways we could improve this are:

➡️ Banning nut products on planes.

➡️ Providing allergy prevention and treatment training to all airline staff.

➡️ Stocking planes with anaphylaxis treatment kits containing adrenaline auto-injectors (Kitt Medical).

There’s much more that can, and should, be done to make flying safer for all.