A direct Delta flight from New York City to Seattle had to make an unplanned stop in Billing after the plane’s toilets stopped working and several passengers considered it to be the emergency situation on Saturday night.
According to Delta incident report, “While enroute, the Boeing 757’s toilet ceased functioning, with passengers queuing up and indicating they needed to visit the toilet”.
“All toilets were full and passengers needed to go really bad,” the report states.
The flight was travelling near the Canadian border and diverted hundreds of miles South to Billings where it landed about 6pm.
The gate was not available so the airplane had to taxi to a cargo area where pilots were again told there were several “passengers that needed to find a lavatory very urgently.”
The Delta reported that ground crews rolled a stairway to the airplane so passengers could disembark to find relief of built-up pressures.
Kevin Ploehn, the Billings director of aviation and transit said, “ground crews escorted the passengers safely into the terminal where they could do their business and wait while the plane’s toilets were serviced. The plane was also refueled so it could take off again”.
Flight gets diverted to Billings Logan International Airport occasionally, but not normally to answer the call of nature. On a good day, the coast-to-coast flight can take about six hours.
