"It's just allergies, I've never called in sick my whole airline career"
kind of surprising to me how frequently I've caught someone's allergies.
My all time favorite was flying an 8ish block hour trip to/from San Diego with a Capt who was coughing = sneezing the whole way.....but, as he said, all he needed was to get some rest on the layover. Wasn't quite true because he was worse the whole way back. And yes, in 15 years at the company he had never been "sick".
The amazing thing is that after our "discussion", he seemed surprised that I wouldn't shake hands with him. Even though he'd been coughing and sneezing into his hands for hours.