An American Airlines flight from Dallas Fort Worth to Madrid had to be diverted to New York JFK on Wednesday after one of the onboard toilets began to overflow during the main meal.
This is just the latest in a series of similar incidents at both American Airlines and United Airlines in recent months.
American Airlines flight AA36 took off from Dallas Fort Worth at around 6 p.m. on August 7 for a routine nine-hour flight to the Spanish capital. But after only two and a half hours of flight time, the pilots suddenly decided to divert the Boeing 777 to New York JFK.
As it later turned out, the diversion was due to a broken toilet that was overflowing with waste.
The passengers had to endure the horrific incident on board for another hour until the plane landed in New York. There they were informed that the flight could continue to Madrid that same night.
After the plane spent the night in New York, American Airlines was finally able to put the 23-year-old aircraft back into service the following evening and it left JFK for Madrid-Barajas Airport at around 8 p.m. on Thursday evening.
The incident occurred less than eight months after flight attendants on a New York JFK-bound flight that had just departed Delhi were forced to mop up sewage with airline blankets.
In this case, however, the pilots decided not to divert the plane but to continue flying to the USA. A horrified passenger on the flight said that he and his seatmates had to endure the horrific sewage situation for at least ten hours during the 16-hour flight.
Anmol Kaushik said four of the toilets on board the Boeing 777 were flooded, but an airline spokesman described the events on board flight AA 293 in January as a “minor leak”.
In April, the pilots of a United Airlines flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco decided to divert to Germany after one of the toilets flooded shortly after takeoff.
Before the flight even took off, flight attendants informed passengers that two of the ten toilets were out of order. But once they were in the air, the situation became much worse when they began to overflow with sewage.
It may be Boeing’s fault, as the United Airlines incident also occurred on board a 777-300 aircraft.
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