The Airplane ‘Barf Bag’ Is A Genius Invention Most People Never Think About, And Using One Blew My Mind

Every day, the Federal Aviation Administration manages an average of 45,000 flights covering 29 million square miles of airspace. On average, 2.9 million people board an airliner to go somewhere in America every day. It’s inevitable that at least some of those people are going to get sick. I was one of those people for the first time yesterday. My savior was a little blue bag that resembled a lunch pail. What I hadn’t realized was just how hilariously awkward actually using an air sickness bag was, and how weirdly genius these little bags are.

I will admit, before yesterday, I hadn’t really thought about air sickness bags for perhaps more than 10 seconds over my entire life. I’m not afraid of heights, I love flying, and I only get motion sickness when I’m a passenger in certain cars and I try to use my phone for too long. I can’t even remember a single time when I was sick on a plane. Flying is such a passion of mine that I’m always checking out the airliner’s cabin or looking out of the windows at the airport environment. You’d think that after flying on several dozen Boeing 737s and dozens of Airbus A320s, I’d be bored, but I’m still just as excited as a kid in a candy store.

Yet, I’ve never really paid attention to air sickness bags. If we want to be all fancy and technically correct about it, these are “emesis bags.” But let’s be honest, you’re not going to beg your flight attendant for an emesis bag when you’re sick. But I definitely gave my full attention to an emesis bag yesterday, and the whole experience was two parts awkward, one part hilarious, and three parts enlightening.

Before I continue, yes, I am feeling fine now! I just got home from Prescott, Arizona, where I got to ride the brand-new BRP Can-Am Canyon adventure three-wheelers. You’ll get to read about that soon enough, but I have to stop and talk about my newest fascination.

Why Air Sickness Bags Exist

A terrible sickness enveloped me yesterday. I woke up ok, but within the hour, I felt a rumble in my stomach and a sulfur-like smell came out of my mouth. I was nauseated and wasn’t equipped to deal with it. My chauffeur was waiting outside, and I faced a two-hour drive to Phoenix so I could catch a flight. This was terrifying.

I’ve somehow been lucky enough to have only rarely experienced this sort of situation in my whole life. My only guess was that the steak I had the night before must have made me sick. I figured that maybe I’d just drink a lot of water and the situation would resolve itself.

Oh gosh, I was wrong. My condition worsened as my driver’s black Cadillac Escalade hurtled toward Phoenix. Things got worse still when I climbed out of the hire car and onto the sidewalk outside the Sky Harbor airport. I’ll spare the intricate details, but I did some unspeakable things to a toilet and then to a trash can at a gate full of waiting passengers. I’m not sure I’ve ever been more embarrassed in my life.

My wife came to my aid. She regularly deals with nausea and pointed me to a product called Dramamine. Apparently, people use this stuff to combat motion sickness, but it’s also good for nausea, too. For once, I was happy to pay way too much money for a product in an airport convenience store. I also picked up some Pepto Bismol chewables because I was desperate.

Sadly, whatever made me sick wasn’t going down without a fight. The stomach rumble remained as I boarded my flight. I was so concerned that I never got to look over the beautiful aircraft, say hi to the flight crew, or check out the airport environment as I love to do. Instead, I just sat in my seat and constantly thought, “I hope this Dramamine stuff works.”

Finally, at around 11:05, our glistening United Airlines Airbus A321 taxied to a runway for a departure to the west. Takeoff is normally my favorite flight segment. I love to watch the engines fire up, I like getting the little whiffs of jet fuel, and I especially love it if the aircraft is a hot rod like a Boeing 757. This time, as we neared the runway, my stomach started to hurt. I responded by popping a couple of Pepto tablets.

My body immediately rejected it. Suddenly, as I saw the runway threshold from my window, I knew I was going to barf. This was the worst time to get sick. It’s not safe to leave your seat during the takeoff roll, and even if you did, the lavatories are locked. Weirdos like me know how to unlock them, but regular travelers don’t. Instead, your only real option is the barf bag. I quickly reached into my seat pocket, pulled out a blue bag that looked like a lunch pail, and unloaded into it as the aircraft thundered down the runway. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if it was a real air sickness bag, but it was too late to observe the bag’s construction.

The Awkward Part

Thankfully, my aim was perfect and I avoided making a mess. But what I didn’t see coming was the awkward aftermath. See, I just more or less unloaded into a paper bag, and the plane had only just left the ground. I had no way to dispose of the bag and nowhere to discreetly store it, either. No, instead, I just folded the top like a lunch bag and sat there holding the contents of my stomach as the lady next to me tried to watch some documentary about Megan Thee Stallion. The whole time, I hoped that I was actually holding an air sickness bag and not any normal paper bag. Only I would have such bad luck that I would accidentally barf into a typical paper bag and have the bottom of the bag fail on me.

I’m thankful that my seatmates didn’t make it out to be a big deal. If anything, I didn’t even notice a real reaction from either of the two people in the row. But it was still extremely awkward because here I was trying to be a presentable human while holding a bag of Pepto pink-tinged human gas tank contents in my hands. I then just sat there and waited. 10,000 feet AGL came quickly enough, but the lavatories weren’t unlocked until we hit 31,000 feet, and that felt like it took an eternity. I couldn’t even listen to music because one hand held onto the bag for dear life.

Once the lavatories were unlocked, I then began an even more awkward process of exiting my row with my barf bag in tow. If my seatmates had somehow missed me chucking before, oh, they definitely knew now. So did pretty much everyone else in the immediate vicinity because I accidentally made no effort to hide the bag. I finally tossed the bag into the lavatory trash can and then pulled a new barf bag out of the lavatory to replace the one I used.

The whole ordeal probably took no longer than 30 minutes, but I could have sworn that was like half of my three-hour flight.

Now that I’m back home and I’m feeling great again, I’m reflecting on the whole experience. On one hand, it was sort of hilarious in hindsight. If you get sick during takeoff or landing, you have to just sit there holding your barf until it’s either safe for you to get up or until a flight attendant hauls the bag away for you. If you’re friendly with your seatmates, this means carrying out conversations and having eye contact with someone while you’re holding your darn stomach in one of your hands.

If you’re that seatmate and you aren’t comfortable with someone being sick, then you’re sort of just stuck watching some random person hold a bag of sick next to you. It’s all awkward and sort of hilarious in a dark way. I’m almost surprised I haven’t seen a comedy skit around this.

A Simple, Yet Game-Changing Invention

On the other hand, I now have a great appreciation for the so-called “emesis bag.” It’s such a simple invention that has no doubt helped out countless travelers and flight crews over several decades of aviation.

According to the University of North Dakota, the air sickness bag, as we know it, was invented by North Dakota plastics pioneer Gilmore T. Schjeldahl in 1949. A year before, Schjeldahl set up a bag-making machine in the basement of his then-Minneapolis home. Back then, polyethylene plastic was a new wonder material, and one of its promises was a revolution in food packaging. Schjeldahl experimented with getting the plastic to seal against itself, eventually arriving at the use of a hot iron to melt the top end of a plastic food pack together.

Herb Harris invested $100 in the idea, helping Schjeldahl create Herb-Shelly, Inc. in 1948. Herb-Shelly would later experiment with lamination and adhesives. The plastic technologies invented by Schjeldahl would go on to become heavily used in the food packaging industry.

In 1949, Schjeldahl invented the “thermoplastic bag construction,“ a polyethylene bag with ridges on its top that were designed to be folded on each other and then sealed using a hot iron. The original idea for this bag was for food storage. The user of this bag could store food in it, seal it, cut it open, take food out, and then seal it again. Northwest Orient Airlines took an interest in the basic bag design for a different use: dealing with motion sickness.

While Schjeldahl is often credited for inventing the modern air sickness bag, Vox reports that at least one pilot in the 1920s and the 1930s, Captain Joseph E. Kimm, used brown paper bags to combat passenger motion sickness. A passenger would vomit into the bag and then the bag would be chucked out of the aircraft before its contents got through the paper. Obviously, Schjeldahl’s invention made dealing with motion sickness far less chaotic. Reportedly, Schjeldahl may not have been jazzed about the world’s obsession with his sick bags over his bigger projects, including atmospheric research balloons made with Mylar.

The design of an emesis bag is also so simple, yet so brilliant. Later iterations have been made out of card paper with inner wax paper layers or paper with an internal plastic layer. Some present-day barf bags are just made out of clear plastic with an easy seal top. However, many airlines still use a plastic-lined paper design today as well.

The bag I used on my United Airlines flight was made out of a heavy-duty paper with a plastic inner layer. It was sealed at the bottom and folded over at the top like a lunch bag. Honestly, it’s such a simple and lightweight design that I had doubts it would actually work. But it held together long enough for me to dispose of it.

People Collect Them, Too

I’ve also learned that there are barf bag collectors out there. According to CNN Travel, there are over 100 serious barf bag collectors in the world. These are folks with hundreds, if not thousands, of bags. Dutchman Niek Vermeulen had 6,290 air sickness bags in his collection in 2012.

I can see why these folks collect these bags, too. While United uses plain blue bags, many airlines put beautiful designs on their bags. Some airlines also slap jokes on their bags. German airline Hapag-Lloyd Express once had bags saying “Thank you for your feedback” which is just perfect. Finn Aviation’s bags used to have the company’s logo, a reindeer, barfing out ice cubes.

Some folks collect barf bags from any form of transportation, from buses to spacecraft. Others collect barf bags from political rallies and other places. The barf bag collecting phenomenon has become such a deal that the makers of Dramamine allied with barf bag collectors to make a 13-minute documentary.

Thankfully, the advancement of aircraft technology and safety has led to generally smoother operations than when these bags were invented. High-flying jets alone have offered far smoother rides than the prop-driven aircraft before them. While there are still flights with tons of turbulence, a lot more flights go smoothly, but the bags remain a sort of security blanket for some travelers. This has led to a new sort of life for many air sickness bags. Today, a lot of folks use these bags as trash bags. Or, they may use the bags as take-home bags for unfinished airline food.

In case you’re curious, you get blank air sickness bags for 4 cents a piece so long as you buy at least 100,000 of them!

According to German travel magazine Travelbook, some airlines don’t like it when people use the barf bags as trash bags, as it leads to unnecessary waste and costs. Ryanair has reportedly greatly reduced the number of air sickness bags on its planes to save money, as has Lufthansa. Meanwhile, other airlines have had fun with their bags. Easyjet recommends using your seat’s barf bag as a makeshift phone holder. Some airlines, like Delta, used to have card game score sheets printed on their barf bags. Spirit used to use its barf bags as advertising space.

I hope to never get sick on a flight again. But, should the worst ever overcome me again, I have a new appreciation for an unsung hero of aviation. If it weren’t for that simple paper bag, I would have ruined the pretty floor of an Airbus jet, possibly delaying a flight and destroying the days of over 100 people. Instead, I did my business in a bag, tossed it away, and got to walk away with clean hands and an intact dress.

Really, barf bags are just another reason why commercial aviation works so well today. It really seems like engineers and inventors have thought of nearly every situation that can arise in the sky, including when last night’s steak comes to haunt you on the runway.

Top Photo: Mercedes Streeter/Alibaba