Passengers on Continental Airlines flight 1970 from Amsterdarm to New Jersey on Thursday, June 14 were forced to sit next to sewage that seeped down the aisles for hours, according to King 5:
“To be blatantly honest, I was more nervous than I had ever been on a flight,” said [passenger] Collin Brock. “I’ve never felt so offended in all my life. I felt like i had been physically abused and neglected. I was forced to sit next to human excrement for seven hours,” said Brock.
Here’s what happened: Mid-way through the flight, the toilets stopped working. The flight made an unscheduled stop in Shannon, Ireland to fix the problem…but the problem wasn’t fixed. Shortly after take-off a sewage geyser started, and this time Continental didn’t turn back.
Dana (who was in first class, away from the poo geyeser) from Metroblogging NYC writes:
Shortly thereafter they announced that one of the two working toilets is now completely broken, that we will all–all 250 of us–need to share the one toilet in first class and that it is not quite fully functional. We are literally told not to through any paper down and to only go “#1″ if we can help it.
So here we are on an 8 hour transatlantic flight with one semi-functional bathroom and they start serving food and drink. I had two bloody mary’s hoping that the sodium levels would make me retain water. My boyfriend and I both refrained from eating or drinking much of anything–a real bummer when you paid for first class and all that good food and alcohol that comes with it. Everyone on the flight was told to “limit their consumption” and to “control what comes out on the other end”
Gross! According to Dana’s post, the sewage was bad but the customer service wasn’t much better. (No information, a random overnight stay in Ireland, letting people sit around in a terminal for no reason for hours before telling them their flight had been canceled, etc.)
In the end, Continental has offered passengers a $500 voucher. Would you take it? Is that enough? Could someone pay you $500 to take a poo flight?—MEGHANN MARCO
Sewage flows down aisles of trans-Atlantic flight [King 5]
Continental Flight with Human Waste Running Down the Aisle? Yeah, I Was On That… [Metroblogging NYC]
(Photo: Collin Brock)
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I wonder how long “shortly after takeoff” is in this situation, in regards to when this “geyser” started. And let’s all just calm down a bit and realize that while there was sewage “leaking” down the aisle, I wouldn’t go so far as to classify it as a “geyser”.
And unfortunately, this is a lose-lose situation. Turn around, and you face the wrath of the people who would’ve been willing to deal with it and are now pissed that they’re facing yet another delay. Push forward and you have a plane full of people “forced to sit next to human excrement”.
Lose. Lose.
I’m surprised nobody’s made this comment:
Shit happens.
I just thought of something…the cabin’s saturated in shit and the crew says, “Tough shit [ha ha ha, funny pun.] Yer stuck with it for seven hours.” (Incidently, I’m guessing the cockpit was sealed enough as to prevent the pilot etc. from having to giva a damn personally.] What if it was a terrorist threat? Surely post 9/11, we’ve contigency for such a situation, especially after failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane over the mid-Atlantic. If there is such a response plan for emergency landing, couldn’t they have done that? If there isn’t, why not?
@The Walking Eye: God, that’s funny. In a thread about shit, you’ve done the funniest comment with a mere grammatical critique. Bnissan97, you’ve been justly pwned. I’m sorry but it’s true.
@me: giva=give. I’m my own spelling/grammar Nazi. Speaking of which, I should have said spelling not grammatical. the English language really stumps me sometimes.
I’m struggling so hard not to say “Holy crap”.
No, $500 wouldn’t do it. I’m not the squeamish type either. But… that’s just fucking nasty. I think those people deserve, at the very least, the entire cost of their flights refunded (and I’m willing to bet that many of them were worth more than $500 – 1st class, business travelers who bought their tix last minute, etc.) I’d say, a $500 voucher PLUS refunding the ticket, whatever the cost of the individual ticket was. Maybe a nice gift certificate for a restaurant, too, since these folks couldn’t comfortably eat on the long flight lest they need to use the toilet – not to mention eating next to a river of shit.
I don’t think I’m the first one to complain, and honestly so long as due compensation was given, I’d put up with the shit stream flowing down the aisle. Problem is, $500 is not my idea of due compensation. I think they should comp the ticket and give another free ticket/voucher up to $500. That’s more than fair, and I’d actually willinginly place myself on the flight for that compensation. They probably aren’t even covering half the cost of the most expensive ticket with the $500, so that’s really unacceptible.
I would have thrown a fit. I’ve been on a transatlantic flight before and they’re not too much fun even when conditions are optimal.
Hour one, I probably would have been okay. Hour two, a bit miffed. Hour three, pissed. By the end of the flight, I would have been livid. Maybe it’s my mother’s fault, but I would have absolutely demanded to be compensated for the flight in addition to the $500 voucher – if not more. Double my frequent flier miles or whatever.
The fact that the flight crew actually TOLD people to limit their intake of food and drink and to “only go #1 if you can” ON A TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT should clearly demonstrate that there’s a TREMENDOUS problem.
Sorry about the all caps, but they’re necessary to convey how incredulous I am that any decent airline would allow this to happen.
A voucher worth another worldwide return flight would be the minimum compensation for this disgustingness. Anyone who has ever had a sewer backup in their home knows how traumatizing it is.
I would freak on the airline if all i got was a $500 voucher.
interesting. usually it doesn’t start smelling like crap until you actually land in new jersey.
“welcome to newark – where the sewer meets the sea!”
For trips to Europe you absolutely MUST fly BA or Virgin Atlantic even if if means a change of planes in Heathrow. Every other airline I’ve flown is like Greyhound in comparison.
Like 67 comments and no one’s gone here yet? Oh well, here it goes.
“I’ve had it with this mother @$%#ing poop on this mother @$%#ing plane”
…edit, actually I’m the 5th person.
Are there really people who can hold their poo that long? When I gotta go, I gotta go. I can maybe hold out an hour, in an emergency, but not eight hours. So no, not even with a free flight + $500 would I willingly fly on Poo Airlines.
@TinaT: I can hold my poo for days.
@Peeved Guy: He comes across as even more dramatic when watching the video clip that quote was taken from. Lucky for him, the othervisuals of the shit-stained carpets and phonecam pictures of the flight attendants wearing makeshift hazmat getups were included to show how nasty it was.
@TinaT: In the interest of sharing way too much information, on a recent round-trip of 13+ hours each way I managed to hold off numbah two until I was off the plane. I’m still not sure from where that particular talent was summoned.
Man, I can always count on the Consumerist posters to make me laugh my arse off, at least once per day…
Yeah, I took a flight on Spirit from Detroit to New York La Guardia that took 4.5 hours of airtime – we spent most of that time circling Manhattan in turbulence. Spirit, no frills airline that it is, no longer provides barf bags, so all you could were people yacking all over the seats and in the aisle. After all that fun, we had to divert to Atlantic City to refuel and have a cleaning crew clean up as much barf as they could. The flight crew were prohibited from giving out water under threat of being fired if they did. Never, ever again will I fly Spirit. Some of these airlines truly deserve to go bankrupt…