Sometimes-sadly-asking for help won’t get you anywhere, and you’d better roll up your sleeves and help yourself. That’s what Leah Williams, a passenger on a Eurowings flight from Düsseldorf, Germany to London’s Heathrow Airport had to do in order to, well, avoid a potentially deadly allergic reaction.
Due to a severe peanut allergy, Williams ended up buying all the peanut packs available aboard to prevent other passengers from opening and eating them near her, Insider reports. If that seems a little extreme, so is the prospect of having a full-blown life-threatening allergic reaction. Williams had already previously suffered from a severe reaction on another flight, where she went into anaphylactic shock when a pack of peanuts was opened in her proximity.
According to Williams, she asked the Eurowings crew to make an announcement about the situation to all passengers, but they refused, claiming it was against the airline’s policies, The Mirror reported. She then decided to solve the problem at its root, and proceeded to purchase all peanut snacks available (to be precise, 48 of them) for the cost of 168 euros, which is roughly $185.
“I said: ‘I’ll buy them all so you can’t serve them. I don’t care how much it is. If you’re not willing to help me this is the only thing I can do,'” she told Insider. “The worst thing was they actually asked if I wanted to take the peanuts, and I said obviously not.”
Williams is now trying to get refunded for her purchase, and has sent multiple emails and phone calls to make that happen. However, so far, she hasn’t gotten much other than a short apology statement from the airline issued to Insider, which reads “We are very sorry that the flight with us did not go as smoothly as desired, and we regret any inconvenience this has caused Leah Williams.”
Williams, however, is looking to make a new policy out of her incident. Since Eurowings doesn’t specify if peanuts are available on its flights, she wants to make sure that changes. “Ultimately, the best outcome, and my aim for this, is for Eurowings to change or update their policy and not sell peanuts on their flight,” she told Insider.
