I'm allergic to peanuts, but don't have any problem with almonds. They usually come with an alarmist warning that they're processed in a facility that might possibly touch peanuts sometime, but the equipment is cleaned in between product runs and I've never had a problem. At home, I eat Blue Diamond almonds because they don't carry the warning and aren't made in a facility that ever comes close to peanuts.

I don't die from peanuts - I just become violently ill and projectile vomit if I eat anything with peanuts or peanut oils in it. Since I prefer to avoid barfing all over people (we're talking bazooka style here - it's not pretty) I ask that the airline not serve me anything with peanuts in it. Occasionally they overreact to this request, but I'd rather see them do this than inadvertently kill someone. Peanut allergies are no joke - I wasn't allergic when I was a kid, but they really mess me up now.

Yeah--my wife isn't one bit happy that she became allergic to lobster. At least it's only unpleasant, not dangerous for her.

Anybody know of anyone else allergic to raw onion?

My father is affected. It's not life threatening, but it makes him violently ill - I've literally seen him go green. Once purged, he's OK, takes a little while to recover though. Cooked onions are fine.

He was in hospital a few years ago after some major heart surgery. They give you a form to fill in in the UK where you can tell the staff about allergies, he also informed the nurses and doctors verbally. They'd still bring him things with raw onion even though he was in a very weakened and poorly state .

I feel desperately sorry for people who's allergies are deadlier. You'd think a hospital of all places would be able to understand how serious they can be.

Thanks etch5895!

We're still waiting. We go in Wednesday if the little doesn't come out on her own before then.

If you visit www.peanutallergy.net and click on Discussion Board on the left hand side of the menu and scroll down to Travel and the Airlines forum you will see it's very serious. So don't downplay it. Just imagine if the flight diverted and the passeger died. If you had a son or daughter with an allergy you would want the same treatment to prevent an allergy.

Blame Canada?

I was thinking of a traveller from someplace that doesn't speak English.

Even my wife who has been here 20 years and does fine in conversation generally doesn't get everything out of announcements in English. (She learned her first word of English at age 43.)

That's like my German. I can get most of the pre-flight announcements, and reasonably understand the stau reports on the radio, but throw something unusual in and I'm lost.

Well, that person's lack of PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY is impinging on your right to do whatever the hell you want!

Until of course, those who rant about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY have their own ox gored -- like my friend the engineer who railed against the need to put in ramps and curb cuts, saying it was a stupid, costly, typically liberal imposition on architects and builders...until she had a baby and realized that ramps and curb cuts aren't just useful for wheelchairs, but make the life of stroller-pushing moms a lot easier.

Or a former boss who was a dyed-in-the-wool each-man-for-himself Libertarian....until he had a deaf son, at which point he became pro-ADA pretty damned quickly. No surprise that the same people who hate to accomodate others are pretty quick to appreciate the concepts like "co-operation" pretty damned quickly when something affects them directly.

They make me cry...

But seriously, I think not having a bag of nuts is a small price to pay for someone else's safety. I do feel, though, that if the allergy is severe enough to warrant a "no-molecule-in-the-air" alert, the airline should be advised ahead of time.

I'm surprised I haven't seen this come up yet, but what about making sure an EpiPen or two are stored on board, and at least one FA is trained to use it. I suppose that might bring in some legal considerations, but I'm sure those could be figured out.

Is there any sort of mask (that could also be kept on board) that can be worn to protect against airborne allergens?

I am (thankfully!) not allergic to anything that I know of, but my DH is allergic to pineapple. Strange, I know -- so is his mother. If they eat something with just a little juice in it, then he needs Benadryl, she needs 911. If he has no Benadryl, off to the hospital he goes, as the anaphlactic shock sets in. I've seen it, after a chinese food lunch - his skin turns red, his neck and face start swelling up, his tongue and throat/tonsils start swelling and cutting off his windpipe. NOT a pretty site!

Luckily, there is no airborne danger to this. I know peanuts have the airborne danger - perhaps if 300 passengers opened candied pineapple bags at once it would be a problem, but that's unlikely.

We turned down an all-expense paid cruise from my parents due to this allergy -- the cruise was a week in Hawaii. We realized that there was simply no way to guarantee that the food we were eating didn't have pineapple, juice, or was prepped on the same surface pineapple had been cut on, etc. So we didn't go.

I also agree that since peanuts are such a 'popular' allergy, letting the airline know about it ahead of time is a duty for the person allergic, and keeping the baggies of peanuts from being servied is a duty of the airline.

No skin off my nose, I prefer the pretzels

When I was on a cruise around the islands of Hawaii I enjoyed the fresh pineapple, but began to have problems with a sore mouth. One of the Hawaiian ladies who worked on the ship warned me that many people are allergic to pineapple; so I should quit eating it. She also said that on that ship (the old S. S. Independence, I'm showing my age here) the kitchen staff were very careful with pineapple for that reason.