An Alaska Airlines plane flying from Hawaii to Alaska was forced to turn around after a bathroom flood filled the aisles of the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane with water.
The flight from Honolulu to Anchorage left the island shortly after 10 pm on Friday night and was 90 minutes into the flight when the plane’s forward toilet suddenly began to malfunction, leaking water everywhere.
Instead of continuing the six-hour trip to Alaska, the captain of Alaska Airlines Flight 828 made the decision to return to Hawaii to fix the problem.
Video captured by one of the passengers on board shows flight attendants scrambling to clean up the deluge by throwing as many blankets and paper towels on the floor as they could find.
“There was probably two to four inches of standing water that came out as soon as I opened the front bathroom door,” Parker said. Alaska News Source.
An Alaska Airlines flight from Hawaii to Alaska was diverted back to Honolulu due to a flooded bathroom, filling the hallways with water
Passengers witnessed flight attendants hurriedly mopping up water with paper towels as water continued to flow from a malfunctioning sink.
The incident occurred 90 minutes into the flight, which led to the captain’s decision to turn back.
Flight attendants used any paper towel they could find to try to clean up the mess.
Stacks of paper towels were used to try to stop the flow of water from the bathroom.
‘I would say an hour and a half into the flight was when we noticed the water and it was significant. The entire floor of that plane was completely wet.’
The problem is believed to have been caused by the bathroom sink rather than the toilet, meaning the water flowing through the plane was clean and not sewage.
A FlightAware map showed the plane was in the air for a total of 2 hours and 18 minutes, before landing safely in Hawaii at 12:30 a.m.
In the end, passengers had to change their reservations to other flights, as there were no other spare planes to take them to their destination.
The aisles of the plane were soaked as water ran throughout the plane.
Paper towels could be left scattered all over the floor while flight attendants did their best to clean them up.
The flight was 90 minutes into the six-hour trip to Alaska when the captain decided to turn back.
The incident occurred aboard an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9.
In January, an Alaska Airlines flight came close to disaster when a plane door exploded 16,000 feet above Portland.
Passengers aboard the Alaska Airlines flight were notified last month that they could be considered “possible victims of crime” following the mid-air explosion incident in January.
“We apologize to our guests for the inconvenience this caused and commend the crew for their actions in ensuring the well-being and comfort of our guests,” the airline said in a statement.
Alaska Airlines made headlines earlier this year after a door plug on one of its Boeing Max planes exploded mid-flight at 16,000 feet on Jan. 5 with 171 passengers and crew on board, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon.
Last month, Justice Department investigators contacted some of the passengers to inform them that they might be victims of a crime. It also led to the departure of the company’s CEO, Dave Calhoun.
A United Airlines Boeing 777-300ER was forced to return to Frankfurt after a broken toilet caused feces to flood the cabin, emitting an unpleasant odor.
The flight had been traveling for an hour but the technicians could not solve the problem so the Boeing 777-300ER returned to Frankfurt in Germany.
Friday night’s bathroom incident is similar to one experienced by passengers aboard a United Airlines flight traveling from Frankfurt, Germany to San Francisco, in which the Boeing 777-300ER’s toilet overflowed, filling the cabin with a foul smell.
United Airlines Flight 59 was an 11-hour, 30-minute journey to California when the captain of the Boeing 777-300ER decided it was best to return to Germany rather than continue flying across the Atlantic.
FlightAware shows the plane circled for a short time over the North Sea, east of England, as the crew weighed their options. Technicians could not find an immediate solution to the problem.
The smell invaded the entire plane shortly after takeoff.
Passengers said the contents of the waste tank overflowed and spilled into the cabin, which only served to worsen the situation.
The plane, which is only seven years old, landed again in Germany just two hours after taking off.
“On Friday, March 29, United Flight 59 returned to Frankfurt following a maintenance issue with one of the aircraft’s bathrooms,” a United statement read.
“Passengers were provided with overnight hotel accommodations in Frankfurt and were rebooked on a different flight to San Francisco the next day,” the statement added.