A Delta flight’s emergency landing was forced by broken toilets and passengers who “needed to go really bad," the airline said.
The airline was carrying passengers on a six-hour direct flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Saturday when the toilets started to malfunction, the Billing Gazette and the New York Daily News reported, forcing a pitstop in Billings, Montana.
"(The Boeing 757's toilets) ceased functioning, with passengers queuing up and indicating they needed to visit the toilet," a Delta incident report on the emergency landing stated. "All toilets were full and passengers needed to 'go really bad.'"
The Daily News reported that since no gates were available when the Delta airliner landed in Billings, it was taken to a cargo area.
Kevin Ploehn, the Billings director of aviation and transit at Billings Logan International Airport, said ground crews then escorted the passengers to some restrooms while the toilets on the plane were being fixed.
"I've heard of flights getting diverted, not here, because toilets overflowed and that blue water was rolling down the aisle," Ploehn told the Gazette. "That can't be very pleasant."
The International Business Times reported in 2016 that an OpenSkies transatlantic flight from New York to Paris was diverted to Shannon Airport in Ireland because of a "serious problem" with the Boeing 767's toilets.
Saturday's broken toilet incident may have not been the most unusual reason to have an emergency landing within a month. The Times of India reported that a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Bali Nov. 5 was diverted to Chennai, India when an Iranian woman reportedly learned that her husband was having an affair.
On the flight, woman reportedly unlocked her husband's mobile phone while he was sleeping. She then started a fight which the crew couldn’t stop, forcing the pilot to make the decision to divert the flight, the Times said.
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