Nightmare flight for Air India’s passengers
March 17, 2017-New Delhi
A total number of 324 adults, seven infants along with sixteen crew members traveling by Air India’s wide-body Boeing777-300 (VT-ALJ) aircraft were troubled with the chocking plane toilets during the sixteen hours long nonstop air-trip from Delhi to Chicago days earlier.
340 onboard passengers of Air India’s 16-hour-long nonstop flight from Delhi to Chicago went through a horrifying nightmare air trip where the onboard passengers had a limited access to an operational toilet.
According to the Indian media, the Boeing 777 aircraft with registration (VT-ALJ) took off from Delhi with four non-operational toilets. The aircraft then was left with only eight properly functioning toilets. But the long queues standing outside the toilets were compelled to hold on their excreta for two long hours before the arrival time as the toilets were completely left unusable. The flight had 324 adults, seven infants along with sixteen crew members onboard.
“The Boeing 777-300 (VT-ALJ) flew to Delhi from Hyderabad on Friday night for operating to Chicago. Four out of twelve toilets in the plane were clogged and the staff of Indian flag carrier had tried to clear the disturbed toilet by nitrogen flushing but weren’t able to overcome the disturbance. Since the trip tickets at the airlines was completely booked to take a full cabin of passengers from Delhi to Chicago and the Indian flag carrier at the other hand had no alternate aircraft to conduct flight in at such a short notice period which as a result compelled them to operate the flight with the eight serviceable toilets and had released the aircraft under minimum equipment list (meaning with an issue which needed to be tackled later),” stated a senior AI official reported the Indian Media.
However, the remaining eight toilets got full just before the time the flight crossed the Atlantic which was about two hours away from the Chicago.
In Delhi, the airline’s staff had tried to clear the disturbed toilets using nitrogen flushing. But the toilet pipes were choked with plastic bottles and sanitary napkins flushed by the passengers into the toilets. Analyzing that, opening up the toilet system would have consumed long period of time so the plane was released under MEL. The aircraft was grounded in Chicago for the toilet maintenance service and was released for operation after the maintenance work. The aircraft is back at Delhi and is currently preparing for an operation to London.
