Airborne

"Airborne" is a third-season House episode that first aired on April 10, 2007. On a trans-polar flight from Singapore to New York, House and Cuddy face a “Flight Into Danger” as the passengers around them keep getting sick, and even Cuddy seems affected. Meanwhile, back in Princeton, Wilson leads House’s team when a middle-aged woman seems to be suffering from her recent decision to live life to its fullest.
==Recap==
An older woman welcomes a beautiful young woman who offers to perform sexual favors for a fee. The older woman grabs a packet of several $100 bills. She looks upon the now scantily-clad young woman before suddenly passing out on the floor. The young woman calls 911.
The older woman is transported to Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, where she is examined by Wilson. He quickly notes the motion sickness patch that she left attached— it could have caused her collapse. The young woman wishes to see another client, but Wilson urges her to stay with the older woman just in case she relapses. The patient wants to let the woman go, but she then falls to the floor with a seizure that can‘t be explained by the motion sickness patch. Wilson wonders where House is.
Meanwhile, House and Cuddy are at an airport gate in Singapore, boarding the plane for a flight back to New York. Cuddy notes how House has racked up over $500 in room service expenses during the trip. The airline hostess welcomes House to first class but tells Cuddy her seat is in coach. House says he solved the expense problem by downgrading her seat.
Back at the hospital, Wilson sits with the patient and asks her about recent activities that might have contributed to her blackouts. The woman regretfully tells Wilson that she went to Venezuela, where she had probably consumed unsanitary water and food, drank dangerous alcohol mixtures, engaged in unprotected sex, and inhaled cocaine. She assures Dr. Wilson this is not her typical behavior, and she is afraid that her trip is why she is ill.
House is given a steak dinner as he notes a Korean man moaning a few seats down. When he regurgitates a pink liquid, House tells the flight attendant that he's drunk. When the attendant asks if there's a doctor on the plane, House offers to "go get her" and "kindly" relieves Cuddy of an uncomfortable seat in coach.
Wilson starts discussing the case with House's team. He politely orders several tests to be done to determine the disease while Foreman notes that Chase's suggestions are most likely based solely on the fact that Cameron suggested them.
On the flight, an angry Cuddy returns to House, noting that the vomiting and moaning man may likely have meningococcus, a highly contagious form of bacterial meningitis. She expresses concern that if they don't order the plane to turn around, their North Pole route will leave them unable to land for fifteen hours, potentially resulting in the death of the sick man and anyone infected by him. However, House remains convinced that it isn't meningococcus and advises against causing hysteria.
Chase and Cameron are sent to scan the older woman's house for toxins. Cameron thinks Chase is agreeing with her because they're having sex. Cameron coerces Chase into having sex on the patient's bed. Chase is initially reluctant because the patient's cat is watching them from atop a chest of drawers. Cameron removes his pants, and he changes his mind.
A girl in the seat in front of House has overheard their conversation and soon proceeds to vomit. Cuddy still believes that it's meningococcus and that immediate action needs to be taken. House is dismissive until he sees a rash on the woman's back—the same symptom the Korean man had.
House creates an ersatz differential team by asking a young boy if he can say “Crikey, mate” and then to agree with everything he says (imitating Chase), telling a foreign man to disagree with everything he says (imitating Foreman), and directing an annoyed middle-aged woman to get mad at him for everything he says (emulating Cameron). The number of sick passengers is increasing. House begins to scribble on the projector screen in coach as though it were the whiteboard. He concludes that the sea bass served for dinner contained a toxin. House announces on the loudspeaker that a man has ingested a food-borne toxin and that anyone with a seafood dish should proceed to the restrooms and vomit as soon as possible. Most of the passengers immediately rush to the toilets. House hesitantly agrees with Cuddy that meningococcus would also explain the symptoms.
The team meets with Wilson at the hospital. Chase notes the tox screen was a waste of time, as was Foreman's brain scan and tests. Wilson theorizes that the woman has breast cancer, and they prepare her for a mammogram.
More passengers start feeling sick, and Cuddy insists that it is meningococcus. The Korean man is feeling worse. House gets the patient to stand up to prove he doesn’t have the ataxia typical of meningococcus, but he collapses.
Wilson approaches the young woman, who is leaving, and asks her to stay with the older woman for moral support as she has no other friends or family. The mammogram is completed without event, but as Cameron helps the woman away from the machine, she begins complaining of eye pain. This, as well as a spotless mammogram, debunks the cancer diagnosis.
House is still trying to determine what is wrong with the Korean man. He guesses radiation sickness. He thinks the blonde woman with the rash is pregnant. Cuddy dismisses House for coming up with two different diagnoses. Right then, Cuddy starts having the same symptoms. Cuddy tells House, "I told you so," while he examines her. House informs the attendant that there is something to worry about but to tell the passengers otherwise. More passengers get sick. They realize they need medication.
Wilson talks to the young woman, who admits she has just met the patient. Wilson says she can go. She reluctantly leaves, gives Wilson her phone number, and asks to be informed about how things are going with the patient.
The patient is transferred to a testing lab, told to cover her eye, and made to stare at a spiraling screen to help induce a seizure. This tactic also fails when the woman's brain activity plummets as she goes comatose.
House parades up and down the aisles, collecting medication from reluctant passengers. He diagnoses a Businesswoman with herpes and finds her male companion with the pills to treat it. He announces that unless the passengers give up their meds, some will likely be de-planing in body bags. Pill bottles immediately come out of pockets across the plane.
Back at Princeton, Foreman theorizes that the patient has an intercranial bleed that the tests missed and advises drilling into the patient's skull to relieve the pressure. Cameron disagrees, and Chase follows her lead, which doesn't surprise Foreman. Wilson first orders a lumbar puncture to play it safe.
They only find a few antibiotics, and the Korean man is allergic to penicillin. Cuddy tells House to do a lumbar puncture on the Korean and give him antibiotics if the fluid is cloudy. House thinks it is foolhardy to do a lumbar puncture due to the lack of equipment and turbulence but agrees when Cuddy mockingly suggests they just let the patient die.
At the same time, the older woman is prepared for a lumbar puncture in the hospital.
House jerry-rigs instruments to perform the procedure, showing the liquid is clear. House makes another broadcast informing all passengers that they must be isolated when exhibiting symptoms such as fever and tremors in the left hand. When several passengers' hands begin to shake uncontrollably, House notes that none of them have bacterial meningitis but are exhibiting mass hysteria and that if they all relax, their symptoms will soon disappear. To prove his point, he reminds Cuddy that left-hand tremor is not a symptom of meningitis or anything else. The fluid from the lumbar shows no evidence of infection, and even the rashes are psychosomatic. He suggests "drinks all around" at the airline's expense as the perfect solution. Cuddy starts feeling better almost immediately. However, the Korean man is still sick, and House has no idea why.
House goes back to his "whiteboard" and his "team". When Cuddy mentions condoms, House concludes that the Korean man may be acting as a drug mule, and the cocaine in condoms he swallowed may have burst, setting up the conditions for an overdose. They will have to operate. "New Chase," thinks it's a fantastic idea.
With the older woman's lumbar puncture results unhelpful, Foreman concludes the only logical step at this point is to drill into the older woman's head. Chase wonders if his sexual relationship with Cameron is affecting his work. As they prep for surgery, Chase questions why the woman's cat wasn't eating any of its food and realizes the patient has no appetite.
House preps the Korean man for emergency surgery by consuming alcohol and having his "team" hold him down on the floor.
As they prepare her for surgery, Chase rushes to the older woman's house wearing a gas mask to scan for toxins again. He notices that the woman's cat has died atop the chest of drawers, the highest point in the room and that its food remains untouched. He follows a pipeline outside, eventually leading to a house being fumigated with methyl bromide, a potent insecticide poisonous to everything. He quickly calls Cameron, who alerts the surgeons just moments before the drilling has commenced.
House is about to make the abdominal incision when the young boy accidentally lets go of the Korean man's shoulder and then quickly holds it back down again, causing the man to moan in pain and then fall silent. House realizes that pressure on his joints relieves his pain. He checks the man's wallet and notes a receipt for a scuba-diving session the previous day. Cuddy orders the flight attendant to drop from 38,000 feet to below 5,000 feet; the man has the bends from surfacing too quickly from a deep dive the previous day and then moving to an airplane environment pressurized to only 8,000 feet. House also orders pure oxygen to flush the nitrogen out of his system and takes a hit himself.
Wilson and Chase tell the patient what happened: an old electrical service ran from the fumigated house to her house, which was once joined as a single estate. The motion sickness patch temporarily masked the effects of the poison. She feels better knowing it wasn't her trip that nearly killed her; it was coming home.
The flight attendant thanks House for his aid and tells him she’s in New York every Monday. He asks if she’s handicap accessible.
Wilson calls the young woman to tell her that the older woman will be okay and thanks her for standing by her side. Wilson asks the young woman if she’s coming back to visit.
Chase conveys to Cameron his desire for a relationship beyond "friends with benefits." However, she reminds him that he's crossing the agreed-upon boundaries. She asserts that while it was enjoyable, their arrangement had to end.
== Major Events ==
* House and Cuddy return home from a conference held in Singapore.
* With House out of the country, Wilson temporarily takes over as the head of the Diagnostics team.
* Chase and Cameron break into the patient's home to search for clues but end up having sex instead.
* What appears to be a deadly illness breaks out on the flight back from Singapore, leaving House and Cuddy to discover what's happening. Cuddy also falls ill, forcing House to handle the whole case himself.
* In the end, most of the passengers are diagnosed with mass hysteria while the Korean just has the bends from scuba-diving the previous day.
* Cameron breaks off the friends-with-benefits relationship with Chase when he says he wants "more".
*For a change, instead of finding out the random languages House does speak, it is revealed that he does not speak Korean.
== Zebra Factor ==
Two different ones for this episode. Methyl bromide poisoning scores a 10/10 as it is very rare because of the precautions taken with the substance to prevent accidental poisoning.
In this case, the decompression sickness scores a 1/10, at least after the receipt was found. It is prevalent among scuba divers and those who work in compressed air environments, such as tunnel diggers. The mass hysteria complicated the diagnosis, causing people on the plane to unconsciously mimic the symptoms, making it look like a contagious disease.
== Goofs ==
* The needle House used for lumbar puncture was initially shorter. When the syringe was uncapped, it was about an inch. When House performed a lumbar puncture, the needle was about 2 inches.
==Trivia & Cultural References==
*The title refers to both the airplane where the plot with Cuddy and House takes place and the airborne toxin that afflicted the patient in Princeton.
*When this episode aired, the Singapore-Newark flight depicted was the longest commercial flight in the world. It takes around 18 hours to fly from Singapore to New York Newark. However, the route was canceled on November 25, 2013, due to the global economic recession and rising fuel costs. The film depicts a crowded flight. In reality, however, the route was operated by an Airbus A340-500, featuring only 100 business-class seats. Singapore Airlines reinstated the flight in 2018, maintaining its exclusive business-class configuration with no economy seating.
*Singapore is a small nation on an island at Southeast Asia's tip of the Malay Peninsula. Patient Peng, who suffered from decompression sickness, had a receipt for "Tekong Scuba Rental," referring to Tekong Island in Singapore. However, it is a military installation, and civilians are prohibited.
*The scene at the airbridge shows the airport as Serapong International Airport. Serapong is located in Melaka, Malaysia, and does not have an airport of its own. Factually, Singapore's only international airport is called Changi International Airport.
*Zinfandel is an American wine, the grapes primarily grown in California.
*WHO is the acronym for the World Health Organization.
*“El Gordo” is Spanish for “The Fat One” or “The Big One”.
*The plane House and Cuddy flew on from Singapore to New York was probably a Boeing 767-200. However, this would be impossible as no 767 models can have such a range.
*House's thought that eating the seafood meal had made the flight passengers ill is borrowed from the film Airplane!, a 1980 comedy in which everyone on the flight who ate the fish (including all three members of the flight crew) becomes ill, and the plane has to be landed by a passenger, an ex-pilot with a "drinking problem". The plot of Airplane! was based on a dramatic film from 1958 Zero Hour!, which was based on a 1956 Canadian television movie, Flight into Danger, featured a very young James Doohan and Kate Reid.
*Pej Vahdat, known for his role as Arastoo on Bones, appears as a member of House's makeshift diagnostic team on the airplane. He portrays a character with limited English fluency.
*”Crikey, mate” refers to the noted Australian wildlife enthusiast Steve Irwin.
*The flight attendant clearly asks  "Malalagnat ka ba?" to the Korean passenger after he first vomits when it should be "Nilalagnat ka ba?". It means "Do you have a fever?" in Tagalog.
==Helpful Hints==
Cases like Peng's often occur on flights departing from popular scuba destinations like Hawaii. Diving and flying within a short time span is risky because while diving ascent pressure is controlled to avoid decompression sickness, a plane's rapid pressure drop can cause residual nitrogen in the bloodstream to form bubbles.
==Cast==
*Hugh Laurie as Gregory House
*Lisa Edelstein as Lisa Cuddy
*Omar Epps as Eric Foreman
*Robert Sean Leonard as James Wilson
*Jennifer Morrison as Allison Cameron
*Jesse Spencer as Robert Chase
*Jenny O'Hara as Fran
*Meta Golding as Robin
*Krista Kalmus as Joy the Blonde
*Tess Lina as Keo
*Jamison Yang as Peng
*Melissa Kite as Sour Faced Woman
*Pej Vahdat as Hamid
*Connor Webb as 12-Year-Old Boy
*Ben Carroll as Businessman
*Gayla Goehl as Businesswoman
*Karla Droege as Mother
*Savannah Paige Rae as Crying Child
*Victor Buno as Passenger One
*Donna Silverberg as Passenger Two
*Bobbin Bergstrom as Nurse
*Kal Parekh as Passenger Three
==Links==
*Episode page at IMDB﻿
*Episode article at Wikipedia
*Episode page at House MD Guide
*Episode transcript at Clinic Duty
*Episode quotes at House MD Quotes
*Episode page at TV.com
*Episode article at TVIV
*Episode preview at The House of Fan
*Episode recap at Buddy TV
*Quotes at Dr Greg House.com
*Episode review at Blogcritics
Category:Season 3
Category:Episodes
Category:Zebra Factor 10
Category:Zebra Factor 1