Airplane Diverted Into SFO Due To At-Capacity Toilets

A plane that was over the Pacific Ocean en-route to Hawaii had to turn back for San Francisco so the toilets could be emptied.

By nowproducerdave on January 17, 2018
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Not sure what they’re eating in Denver, but a plane that was in route to Hawaii from the Centennial State to the beautiful Hawaiian islands had to make a pit-stop in San Francisco because the toilets reached their capacity. We’ve heard of malfunctioning systems, but there are usually backups that can take over. What we’ve never heard of on an airplane is the system being at it’s capacity. In true Cousin Eddie style, they had to pump their toilets.

The flight was only about 3 hours from landing in Hawaii as well, which is basically the half-way mark, so we’re not sure why they decided to turn the plane around and head for San Francisco when they could have just continued on their way to the islands, because we’re assuming that it was another roughly 3-hour trip back (since flight time to Hawaii from SF averages about 6 hours or a little less). But, the diversion added about 8 extra hours to the flight, and one angry passenger says that it cut into a lot of peoples’ vacation time.

Truth be told, the toilets weren’t emptied while the plane was in Denver, so that’s why they filled up so quickly on this flight, and keep in mind, there’s a capacity that includes liquid, so every flush in general fills that tank, not just the “solid” ones. Sink water, too, when you wash your hands. Passengers are claiming that flight attendants were actually locking the bathrooms to keep people out as they were getting near full.

We’d like to assume that there was still some “safe room” in the storage tanks and they were just playing it safe, but why they had to turn around and fly back pretty much the same amount of time it would have taken to just land in Hawaii is weird, and we’d like to hear their policy or reason why they chose to do that.

Anyway, passengers were offered 10,000 bonus miles, or a $200 travel voucher. So that’ll pay for, you know, maybe a checked-bag and a soda? I guess if you drink it quickly enough you can use that instead of the lavatory?

Source.

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