A strange follow up to Wednesday’s story of a groundbreaking windpipe transplant: it nearly didn’t happen after an airline allegedly refused to fly stem cells used to make the new windpipe for Claudia Castillo from England to Spain.

The cells, which were used to coat a donor windpipe, were grown in Bristol and then flown to Barcelona. But airline EasyJet refused to carry the stem cells, saying that they were stored in more than 100ml of fluid and therefore breached regulations and were a “security risk”, says Bristol’s Martin Birchall.

“I almost got arrested by armed police. I was so furious, trying to explain months of work,” he says (Sun / Daily Telegraph).

“The clock was ticking. We’d taken the cells out of their culture media an hour before. We thought about driving to Barcelona, but that would have taken too long.”

Eventually Birchall paid for a surgeon friend of one of the research team to fly the stem cells in his private jet (BBC). The university later refunded the money.

EasyJet says “we do not have any record of the request” but it has refunded the cost of the flight (Sky News).

The cells apparently had to arrive in Barcelona within 16 hours of leaving the Bristol lab. Maybe Birchall can count himself lucky. When I last flew EasyJet from Barcelona to London I arrived nearly 12 hours late. And in Bristol.

UPDATE – Just to clarify, in light of the comments this post has attracted: airlines can carry items with more than 100 ml of liquid such as transplant organs. The BBC notes, “The airline had said it would carry the cells, but on the day check-in staff refused”.

Image: Claudia Castillo / University of Bristol