Man Suing Airline After Flesh-Eating Spider Bite

Billie Cohen
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If you see this spider, run the other way. An airplane passenger’s leg was severely mangled from just one bite. (Photo: Rosa Pineda/Wikimedia Commons)

By Billie Cohen

As if you didn’t already have enough to worry about when flying — strange sounds, angry seat neighbors, and the real reason planes crash, not to mention the usual complaints of discomfort and price gauging — now you have to worry about deadly spiders.

John Hogg was on a flight from Qatar to South Africa when he was bitten by a brown recluse spider — an incredibly poisonous arachnid whose flesh-eating venom is potentially deadly. He felt the stab of the bite, and then turned on the overhead light only to see a spider running across the floor (a few flight attendants even yelled “spider!”). Within minutes, his leg had swollen up. As reported in the Daily Mail, Hogg said, “‘By the time I got to hospital my leg was bursting open, there was pus, it was black. It was a right mess. They told me if I had been any later I would have lost my leg or even died. It was terrifying.” Hogg spent a month in the hospital in South Africa, where he went through three operations and a skin graft, and is now taking legal action against Qatar Airways.

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What’s even scarier is that this isn’t the only instance of a brown recluse spider biting a passenger on a plane. In 2012, a woman on a Delta flight, which was also on its way to South Africa (though it originated in Atlanta), suffered a bite. Brandi DeLaO described the pain as something she “would not wish on [her] worst enemy for anything.” Like Hogg, DeLaO also underwent multiple surgeries to remove all the venom, and she also sued the airline. She was eventually paid an $80,000 settlement by Delta. Hogg’s suit is still in progress.

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