Nuts on planes

[Bookmonster123]

Hi

I am due to fly with DS soon, first time he’s been on a plane. DS has a peanut allergy, has epi pens prescribed. What’s the protocol about nuts during the flight.

Do I tell the airline at booking, check in or on the day? Do they always accommodate requests not to eat nuts during the flight?

Thanks

Not flown for a while, but the airlines I’ve travelled with don’t hand them out AND will announce on tannoy at the start of the flight that there is a child/traveller on board who has a nut allergy so they request that no nuts are eaten/opened during the flight.

I would contact the airline to confirm their policy, but most are pretty strict about it now.

if I was told on a plane not to eat any of those due to a severe allergy then I wouldn't. It is just being considerate surely to other passengers

Is that shorthand for saying, don't be that person who dies on board, thus hugely inconveniencing other passengers?

100%

I don't love cheese enough for it to be worth a fellow passenger's life.

Totally not a big deal (for most normal people).

@mummymeister its to do with A. the structure of allergenic nut proteins and B. How they're eaten. The proteins are basically heavy and sticky, and hard to clean up, and people often eat them over long periods of time, with their hands - then of course touch switches, handles etc so the risk of cross contamination is high. People don't generally keep a packet of brie or stilton in their pocket and snack on it repeatedly over the course of a few hours, but I, like @HGC2 would not get my wee cheesboard out if I thought it would harm someone!

if I was told on a plane not to eat any of those due to a severe allergy then I wouldn't. It is just being considerate surely to other passengers

But pragmatically how far do you go with a policy like that?

I’m being a bit extreme but take a flight with a few hundred passengers onboard and I’d guess on some days, maybe a real outlier, you could potentially end up with having to start enacting bans cope with different allergies….

I flew a bit as crew and got the impression most/all allergy suffers were careful and managed things very well onboard.

Firstly, on a plane air is recycled and there's no fresh airflow as there would be on bus or train. So the risk of an anaphylactic reaction is much greater.
Secondly, even with an epipen an anaphylactic reaction can be life threatening and requires hospital treatment. On a plane the amount of time it will take to get to a hospital is vastly more than on a bus or train. So the risk of suffering permanent damage / death from an anaphylactic reaction is vastly increased.
Thirdly, surely you'd rather go a few hours without nuts than for your flight to be diverted because of a serious medical incident? Even being totally selfish here and not caring about the life of someone else, it could still ruin the start of your holiday.

I think the nut free school policy would be better to have an age limit, if it doesn't currently have now.

Nuts are one of the most healthy snack source, that won't go soggy & not need to be in fridge to be kept fresh & can still be tasty without having to be sugary packed.

Middle school aged children should be able to be sensible enough to be careful about allergies, if not, 6th form def should be able to.

If there are nut free, sugar free healthy high-protein snacks that do not need fridge to keep fresh, please do recommend.

people do take on sandwiches and cubes of cheese are very common for people to snack on. even if they used the knife to cut cheddar which had previously cut blue cheese and wasnt washed in between thats enough to cause my reaction. people eat with their hands and touch things just the same. trivialising my point by mentioning a wee cheese board just sums the issue up for me.

@rmc2001

Firstly, on a plane air is recycled and there's no fresh airflow as there would be on bus or train.

That’s not quite how it works, yes there’s some recycling (through HEPA filters these days) but a percentage of fresh airflow is being added as part of the process on a continual basis, a matching percentage of old air is bled overboard.

The Imperial College study (upthread) described the mechanics of the process and the ability of the HEPA filters to sift out allergens quite well.

Not as extreme as having someone die on board though, is it?

Buffer zones don't really work on aircraft due to the recirculated air. The level of danger is magnified by the inevitably slower response of the emergency services - if you're over the Atlantic, it's not even like you can do an emergency landing.

The whole point of telling people is that when some / all passengers are asked to refrain from eating nuts, they have had a chance to bring alternative foods with them, which is only fair really.

I am making this comment as someone with a number of food allergies which result in anaphylactic shock, use of an epipen etc. Nuts isnt one of them but blue cheese/brie is. so if its around, on surfaces, air borne particles etc I can have a problem. You cannot ban one food like nuts and not ban all the other foods on a flight that could give other people with allergies the same sort of reaction. why single out nuts? I find travel scary because of my allergies but I try to take precautions like letting the airline know when I book, speaking to the people either side of me if they have their own snacks with them just to make them aware, taking masks and wipes with me to ensure that there are no contact surface mistakes. Its a pain in the arse but I was born like this.

so if you ban nuts why not blue cheese, dairy, bread or anyone other of the allergens.

I have to say that I do agree, and I'm not sure why nut allergies get taken so much more seriously than other equally serious allergies like milk.

I wouldn't ban bread for the sake of a gluten issue though; it's never immediately life threatening, and even labelled gluten-free foods can contain 20ppm of gluten.

I didn't mean to offend you, I have severe allergies too so I actually do understand cross contamination from knives - and nuts is only one of mine.

My point is if you're airborne or contact allergic to cheese then yes, you have every right to ask people not to eat it. But the proteins are different to nuts and easier to remove from surfaces, and LESS likely to be eaten with the hands over a period of hours (partly because cheese is often contained within something else like bread, as you say) - not NEVER eaten with hands.

All of these people that are so inconvenienced by the thought of not eating nuts on a plane ought to ask themselves how much of an inconvenience it would be if the plane had to make an unscheduled landing for said passenger to receive emergency treatment. 🙄

sorry @shrodingersvaccine we will just have to agree to disagree. I fly 4/6 times a year and on almost every flight there is someone with a little pot of cheese cubes (usually with grapes, other fruit or in one of those little pot thingies) I know this because I am on the lookout for it. Plus cheeses are often part of the vegetarian food option on a flight. You have a nut allergy so nuts are what you are looking out for/most concerned about, I get that. but many of us have other just as serious allergies and get a bit pissed off at the start of the flight when they announce the no nuts situation yet the girl next to me has a little pot of cheeses and fruit she is snacking on.

Have flown both short haul and transatlantic recently, multiple airlines. No airlines I have experienced are selling nuts or giving nuts away as a snack any more, they have all substituted with mini pretzels or similar. I wouldn't imagine they can guarantee that none of their products are completely completely nut free, and they probably "may contain traces".

The issue is not the airline food/products, it's what other people might bring with them. Now, I'm not a dick and wouldn't ever pack peanut butter sandwiches or similar for a flight, but again, I could easily have "may contain traces of" products with me.

You can definitely ask for an announcement to be made and I have heard several of these on flights with all sorts of airlines. But at the end of the day that's all they can do - make an announcement and a polite request for compliance. If you are unfortunate to be seated close to someone who IS a dick and who has packed peanut butter sandwiches, the cabin crew can't really police that.

I tend to agree about the age limits - though Allergy UK recommends against nut free schools, without having an age limit on that, and I'll tend to trust the professionals.

Of course any child with an allergy needs to be taught not to eat other children's food.

But it won't stop this sort of incident - a boy with a dairy allergy who died after a slice of cheese was thrown and hit his neck.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boy-death-allergic-reaction-cheese-dairy-school-karanbir-cheema-a8895006.html

As for healthy, sugar free (I presume you mean no added sugar), high protein, shelf stable, nut free snacks - it depends on how you define healthy - but beef jerky, wasabi peas, Love Corn (dried flavoured corn), some fresh fruits, popcorn all spring to mind, and I'm sure there are others. There's also a brand called Mezete which does shelf stable hummus and breadsticks, though they can be quite hard to track down, I do like to leave a couple in the car.

Not as extreme as having someone die on board though, is it?

If the aim is to totally stop death on board TBH everybody needs to stop flying….the aim in reality is usually to mitigate/reduce risks by taking reasonable measures, I’m not sure some things that have been suggested are that reasonable TBH.

Buffer zones don't really work on aircraft due to the recirculated air.

Buffer zones are mainly there to cater for contact by contamination…the recirculated air got a mention above, it was also covered in Imperial College study mentioned upthread, people can point out a lack of control groups but the airflow stuff is basic physics and engineering.

The level of danger is magnified by the inevitably slower response of the emergency services - if you're over the Atlantic, it's not even like you can do an emergency landing.

Having been involved in a couple of medical diversions I’m well aware of all that but thanks for the reminder…..

Recently there was a report in the media that a pilot had a family removed from the plane when they asked that cabin staff to announce that no one on the plane should eat nuts as their child had a nuts allergy. Obviously the airline must be contacted well in advance.

While I agree that there's no hardship in going without nuts for the occasional flight, as there is a range of other things that people are allergic to, often when encountering airborne particles, that there could end up with quite a lot of things banned.

Interestingly, although allergy to dogs, including their airborne dander, is by no means unusual, airlines are increasingly allowing dogs in the cabin. I understand that people with allergies can ask to be seated a few rows away, but no guarantee that this will happen. I imagine that it's only a matter of time before this results in an emergency.

It's been mentioned a lot on this thread, but they actually got kicked off after the man tried to get into the cockpit.... Much more to it than initially claimed.

What on earth are you talking about? Any diabetic will have more than enough medical evidence already, nobody is asking anyone to go and get a doctor’s letter. Are you being deliberately difficult & obtuse? Sorry that someone’s life isn’t worth a minor inconvenience to you.

oh that's such sad incident 😭

Yes, no added sugar or artificial sweetener that won't go off (stay in school bag or cool bag without compromising taste - very fussy eaters due to sensory issues). We currently rely on jerky a lot, it's high dose of salt. Love corn was too tough for my kids, will try wasabi peas. Thanks a lot!

Its nit just the fact that its in the air.
But also someone touches peanuts, goes to the loo, touching handles. A person can react to touching that handle afterwards. So contamination through second/third hand touch.

A friend of mine has a dd who is extremely sensitive to it. She had some napkin/small table cloth with her to have her packed lunch at school, just in case someone earlier on had touched the table with hands covered in peanuts.

@mummymeister but I'm not disagreeing with you. I am allergic to dairy too, so I see both, and I fly a lot too. One isn't worse than the other, but my exposure to dairy is much easier to control than my exposure to nuts, and dairy is much easier to avoid contact with in my experience, because of how it's eaten/processed. It also does not persist on surfaces to the same extent - the allergenic proteins have fundamental structural differences. Peanut allergens also become more allergenic upon heating, unlike dairy allergens. Have you considered that because you don't have a nut allergy perhaps you aren't noticing how many people are eating them?

I'm sorry I offended you earlier but I'm obviously not being clear enough so I think I'll just leave it there :) Have a good, dairy free, day!

I agree with this my son has nut allergies and I don’t think that they should be banned in school because they are not banned everywhere else and it leads to a false sense of security but planes are a big flying tube thousands of feet in the sky, there is no way to easily get medical treatment.