WCVB in Boston says that a woman sat down on a urine-soaked seat on an Air Tran flight to Boston Sunday night. Jennifer Castellano was sitting down for about 30 seconds when she noticed that her pants were wet. She went to the lavatory to check on her clothes and..
“I then realized I was saturated in urine from the smell,” she said. Ew! You’d think the Air Tran staff would be horrified that someone sat down on a seat soaked in a strangers urine… right?
Nah.
“A flight attendant told me that on the previous flight a man had urinated on himself in that particular seat. And I said, ‘I’m not sitting on a three hours flight soaked in someone else’s urine. That is absolutely disgusting,’” Castellano told WCVB.
To make matters worse, she then had to walk through the airport wearing only a blanket (shown above) because Air Tran wouldn’t fetch her luggage. Apparently, it’s against federal regulations for an airline to retrieve your bags for you.
“I get off the plane in Logan, I had to walk through the terminal in a blanket to retrieve my bags from baggage claim. It was humiliating, degrading to walk through an airport dressed like this. They did not offer me any clothes vouchers, to get my bags from baggage claim. They did nothing — absolutely nothing,” she said.
AirTran has offered her a refund and the cost of her clothing.
Ew! What were these flight attendants thinking? We wonder what sort of complaint-themed fare sale Air Tran can come up with to make this go away. Hey, it worked for Southwest! Suggestions in the comments, please.
Woman Says She Sat In Urine-Soaked Airplane Seat [WCVB] (Thanks, Jay!)
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@mrsultana: You make a good point, but I have to laugh at “unscheduled crash.” Do they schedule some these days?
I’d also like to know if anyone here has suggested what the airline should have done. You didn’t like the plastic over the seat idea. Blocking off the whole row? Uh, then you would have 3 people complaining they were bumped off the flight?
Replacing the seat sounds like the best option, especially since they knew about it. They could have gotten one from an unscheduled plane while they were switching passengers.
Makes me wonder what Air Tran’s response would have been if someone had left a turd on the seat.
I’d sure check my in-flight meal real close if that occurred.
damn, it took a long time to get to the comment box this time. anyway, I’ve been in similar situation (dont ask me, and no I was not me) but we were in the middle of the ocean and we had that situation.
with not an empty single seat in the house (ha! funny) what the airline people did was to change the whole seat. Not the metal structure but the cushion that works as floating device. In matter of seconds they took the wet one, cleaned the floor and placed a new (and smelled like it) one in place.
Because in this case was no-body’s fault, or if you want to blame an elder woman be my guest, they just made everybody feel better with some goodies.
well, this was pre 9-11 and international flight. Doesn’t sound incredible that we have been taking so much crap from the airlines for that long does it?
@lazyazz: Dammit!
I scanned down the whole thread, hoping nobody would make this joke.
“Ur-ine for big savings!”
That’s what I get for coming late to the party.
@Buran: Urine isn’t technically sterile. IT IS STERILE. All it is is excess water, electrolyte, and other unmetabolized nutrients. The smell comes from Urea which is how one’s body rids itself of excess Nitrogen. There was no threat to the passenger’s health.
However, the passenger should not have been forced to sit in it. The airline also should have freakin cleaned the aircraft prior to the next flight boarding. I also would not personally want to sit in urine for a typical airline flight’s duration.
@homerjay: “In the event that your seat cushion is too urine-saturated to use as a flotation device…”
Alright, just came up with this doozie:
ValuJet Airlines -> AirTran Airlines -> Incontinental Airlines
And she probably gave up her rights to sue the airline by purchasing a ticket. I’ll bet you anything that there is an arbitration clause in there somewhere.
The problem is that the majority of us have grown accustomed to accepting whatever conditions these businesses force upon us.
In Norway SAS offered me a bag with free clothes and toiletries when they lost my luggage, I was so impressed I said no thanks. That was service. Then when I got to my destination a cab had already arrived and my luggage was waiting for me in my room! That just broke some laws of Physics.
If I were the flight attendant, I could perhaps see keeping my mouth shut if the flight were completely full and I faced the wrath of Corporate for taking the seat out of service (loss of revenue, plus the cost of some comps for a bumped passenger).
Maybe she thought she’d get lucky and find the seat was assigned to a senile, incontinent person who would figure they pissed it themselves?
But if you read the article, the passenger took another seat after shedding her wet clothes.
Bad AirTran.
Check out our piddly fares!
@Buran: No, but I play one at my keyboard! I’m also jury and executioner. There’s a dry cleaners in the back.
I think people in service positions sometimes just get numb to the existence of people where they work. What else could explain the flight attendants’ casual dismissal of the consequences of not blocking off or cleaning a seat soon to be used by another passenger?
Maybe they should replace the barf bags with Depends.
AirTran: America’s #1 airline.
I’ve flown AirTran without incident many times. I guess I’ll have to start checking the seats now before I sit down.
Don’t the seat cushions double as flotation devices? Shouldn’t this mean that they are removable? And if it is an emergency device, wouldn’t it be a good practice, or even the law, to have extra ones on hand?