Traveler claims she was forced to sit under dripping bag for entire Southwest flight: ‘Like Chinese water torture’

It was a round drip flight. She had no trouble getting liquid on this plane: One California flyer allegedly had to sit under unidentified drippage from an overhead bag for an entire flight after the hostess refused to move her or the leaky luggage. A video depicting the passenger’s 20,000 leagues under the seat saga has reportedly amassed 3.5 million views on TikTok.

“It was the worst experience on a plane I’ve ever had,” Sophie Shaw, 24, told Kennedy News. “It was like Chinese Water torture.” The cabin cascade occurred last month while the passenger was flying from San Jose to Santa Ana, en route to see friends in Los Angeles. The San Francisco native, founder of AI business Azuryne, claims she fell asleep shortly after takeoff but awoke after noticing that her “leg and seat were completely soaked.” Shaw initially thought the lady next to her had spilled water until she looked up and saw “a big drip coming from the ceiling.” Accompanying footage shows the unidentified droplets plopping down from a gap in the overhead, splattering the passenger’s seat as if she was sitting under a leaky roof during a monsoon.

That’s when the San Franciscan recalled seeing crewmembers attempt to staunch the leakage before takeoff. “They put some paper towels in the locker, so I guess they’d tried to fix something but they couldn’t,” Shaw said. Due to her petite stature, the 5 foot 2 tech spert claims she couldn’t move the bag, so she enlisted a flight attendant’s help.

Unfortunately, the flight attendant “wasn’t sympathetic whatsoever” to her undesired shower. “I pressed the button and told the flight attendant but I thought she looked at me as if I was a nuisance,” Shaw recounted. “I think it should have been her job to make a bigger deal out of it but she just said the flight was too full and she couldn’t move the luggage.” As a result, the sopping wet traveler was forced to sit under the waterfall for the entire one and a half hour flight.

“I tried to shove myself to one half of the seat to avoid the dripping but my pants were completely soaked and I was basically sitting in a puddle,” Shaw lamented. To make matters worse, periodic turbulence made the water land in different spots like droplet roulette, so even her shoes got soggy.

Shaw was especially “uncomfortable” as she didn’t know the provenance of the substance and feared that it could be “hazardous.” Last month, air travel experts ranked the overhead bin as one of the dirtiest spots on the plane because it is “rarely cleaned” and “touched by a lot of people.” “It was really disgusting to sit through and I was feeling pretty grossed out the entire time so I literally just closed my eyes and listened to music to try and block it out,” she said.

“I think they should have offered to clean it up themselves at the bare minimum and rearranged the luggage to try and stop the drip.” Upon touching down, Shaw immediately filed a complaint to the help desk, who advised her to send in an online claim. Southwest responded within 8 hours, offering the traveler $150 as compensation, which she deemed stingy given that her flight was $160.

Shaw contacted the budget airline again but they didn’t respond. The TikTok commentariat was far more sympathetic to Shaw’s “air drop” nightmare, although many thought she could’ve been more assertive about handling it. “I would’ve said so loudly ‘WHOSE BAG IS THIS !!!!'” claimed one armchair traveler, while snother wrote, “The scene I would make! Absolutely not.

Y’all are either tossing that bag or I am!” A third chimed in, “Helllllllll nooooooooooooo. I’m non confrontational but I’d be confronting.”.