PROBABLY a freak incident but an Australian man made a sickening discovery as he ate his in-flight Singapore Airlines meal and reportedly bit into a human tooth hidden in his rice.

As Bradley Button neared the end of the rice in his SIA meal, there was a sickly crunch. He spat out what was in his mouth and there it was – a tooth that was not his.

“I threw my guts up,” Mr Button from Melbourne says to the Australian media. “For the rest of the flight I was not well, just the idea of having someone else’s body part in my food is not nice.”

Mr Button was on his way home to Melbourne from Wellington aboard SIA Flight SQ248 on Tuesday after a short trip visiting a friend, when the stomach-churning incident occurred.

“The flight attendant that attended to me was adamant that she needed to take it away for testing and was trying to tell me that it was a small rock, when it was without a shadow of a doubt a tooth,” he says. “Then I was given a $75 voucher that I could only use on duty free in Singapore Airlines flights.”

Mr Button said he talked to the passenger next to him who also thought it was a chipped tooth and has confirmed the story to the Australian media. He also took photos which show a small object resembling a molar tooth.

APOLOGY

Singapore Airlines has apologised to Mr Button for the experience and the object will be tested in Melbourne.

A spokesman says in a statement: “We are currently investigating this incident and have sent the object for analysis. Once the results of the analysis are known, we will determine what the most appropriate course of action to take is.

“We expect all of our meals to meet a consistently high standard and we are disappointed in this discovery.”

For the record, Singapore Airlines continues to hog the global headlines as the world’s best airline. In Skytrax’s 2018 World Airline Awards, it clinched the No 1 position it last held in 2008. Qatar Airways, which was top last year, came in second. Japan’s ANA was in third place.

SIA has been moving up the rankings in recent years – it came in third in 2016 and was placed second in 2017. The Singapore carrier also took top spot for three other categories – best airline in Asia, world’s best first class and best first class airline seat.

The awards are based on surveys of more than 20 million travellers, who rated more than 335 airlines between August 2017 and May 2018.

As a feather-in-the-cap, this is the fourth time that SIA has been named world’s best airline by the London-based research firm, after wins in 2004, 2007 and 2008.