Air Tran Lets You Sit In Urine-Soaked Seat
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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Comments:
Just to save the others the trouble of posting...
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
You would think this would be actually illegal under laws regarding biohazards (and body fluids are biohazards). Yes, urine is technically sterile and should be harmless, but still...
I would understand if the flight attendentd did not know about it - but it sounds like they knew someone there pissed in the chair - you would think they would have at least tried to dry it off, or something.
Shouldn't have clicked on this while I'm a) eating lunch and b) sitting.
I suppose its too much to hope that the flight attendants who did nothing to mark the seat as off-limits get fired?
god forbid you actually look down before you sit.
If they offered me a refund for my pants, they would suddenly inflate in value to over $20,000,000.
It will be the "Our prices are so low... you'll piss yourself!" sale.
I think the flight attendants' response wasn't adequate whatsoever, but it's one of those scenarios where you ask "well what else *could* they do?". You're already on the plane, which means you can't leave. They can't get your bags for you, so getting upset at them at that is futile. So in this instance, a FA should have at least offered to change her seat, to "close" the urine-one off, wrap it in plastic or what have you, or if no other seats were available, to ask the customer if she wanted a voucher for the next available flight.
What did *she* want them to do? She wanted a "clothes voucher"?
And I'm pretty sure there are some sort of regulations against them handling your bags at certain points pre/post flight.
This is a scenario in which better communication probably would've made for a happier consumer...
OMG! Why wouldn't the staff BLOCK OFF THE SEAT if they KNEW beforehand that someone had urinated on the seat!? That's DISGUSTING, unsanitary, and unhealthy! Remember WACO, TX!? The were throwing body waste at the officers that cordoned off the compound! How could someone allow another person to sit in a urine soaked seat?!!! Are we now supposed to paper test seats on airlines before we sit in them?!
Air Tran makes Greyhound seem like the Orient Express. I avoid them at all cost.
@sassenach: I've never flown them. Never will, considering their little stunt in the Everglades. (Yes, folks, AirTran is really ValuJet).
Somehow a refund does not seem like enough.
@pinkbunnyslippers: But if they did put plastic over the seat, wouldn't the adjacent passenger(s) get a wee bit suspicious?
"Oh not to worry--somebody just had a little weewee accident on the seat--your seat right next to it is perfectly fine"
Somehow I don't think that would reassure them...
@sassenach: You're damn right. I flew them once and it was like the Port Authority Bus Terminal with wings.
@phospholipid: Yea, because it's reasonable for everyone to assume that the person before you pissed the seat.
that's totally lawsuit material
The flight attendants should be at fault for this...they're responsible for reporting incidents such as this, and I know when planes get to an airport, crews go through and pick up trash, take items left behind, etc. It's not possible that NO ONE aside from one or two flight attendants noticed the smell or was told there was a situation with a previous passenger.
And what about the guy who peed? I don't care if he's 95 years old, getting up to go to the bathroom isn't difficult.
@catnapped: Then maybe block off that entire row? Not let anyone sit there? Good point.
I just find it deplorable that there isn't some sort of protocol for handling a situation like this. And if this IS their protocol, Air Tran should be ashamed of themselves.
@phospholipid: God forbid you should actually know what you're talking about.
It's fairly difficult to sit down in a plane without looking at the seat, BUT considering the synthetic upholstery used on these cushions, the covering was most likely dry, while the inner materials/foam was still soaked.
I think AirTran just discovered its new marketing demographic.
Fly the new and improved AirTran...now with more pissy goodness!!!
@phospholipid: HA! I was wondering how someone was gonna blame the victim this time. At first I thought someone was gonna say "That's what you get when you fly cheap," but this is much better. Thanks for clearing that up for me, chief!
yummy
I would have dropped trou and left a steamy turd on the seat.
This stuff is a regular occurence on the CTA
a href="#c3409756">catnapped: I flew in a plane once that had a plastic bag over one of the seats. Just figured the seat was broken or something. People didn't really freak out.
i'm sure someone's going to say that when she bought the ticket, she agreed to their terms and you are committing fruad if you get your money back because she clearly had a choice to buy a ticket elsewhere, where they had a urine refund policy. lol.
Shenanigans.
If this happened while flying into Boston the airport would of shut down, and the woman would of been arrested at the gate, charged with interfering with a flight crew, failure to obey the instructions of a flight crew, disturbing the peace, possession of more then 3 ounces of liquid on a plane, possession of biological agents, terrorist threats, and held for 17 hours for questioning without water or a bathroom, before being put in jail for 6 months, fined 2.2 million dollars, put on the no flight list, and prohibited from wearing terrorist pants ever again.
I call bullshit. No way this happened in Boston without the woman getting arrested. If it did, Boston has improved a lot in the last year. In context this is pretty good treatment for Boston.
if i remember right, the valuejet crash was because a shipping company shipped some oxygen canisters in a tight enclosed box, one of those canisters opened (which causes it to get really really hot) and a chain reaction explosion occured.
Here comes the new slogan... "AirTran: What a pisser!"
@zibby: I have heard that was SouthWORST but that is good to know.
I don't know about anyone else, but I hate being THAT person who holds up the entire line so I do just plop down in my seat expecting it to be free of human excrement. I generally sit down right on top of the pillows and blanket.
By the way, my friend was a flight attendant, and NEVER use the pillows or blankets. Just your friendly holiday travel tip.
I believe it would be a "fare sale"?
This almost beats the freshly (non cleaned) vomit encrusted seat and wall I had to endure for six hours on Southwest once.
Almost.
i dunno but if i'm paying 400 bucks to be crammed into a tiny seat and treated like crap, i think the least they can do is make sure that the seat isn't, you know, covered in bodily fluids.
then again i am flying United this weekend, where flight crews that hate you are the norm and they enjoy leaving you in denver. this really feels like something UAL or USair would do...
@Petrarch1603: You are exactly correct.
If the phone service in my house went out because some drunken idiot wrapped his car around a telephone pole and took out the phone lines, I wouldn't blame the contractor that built my house for the absence of phone service. I would blame the idiot that took out the phone lines.
In this case, the crew members and employees that knew about the pissy seat and did nothing should be severely punished. That is just disgusting. If Airtran treated all of their customers this way on purpose, then there would not be an Airtran. This is just very poor judgment by a small group of people that happened to be wearing an Airtran name tag.
Hah, thanks for all the comments. Sure, argue away that it's the airlines fault, because it is. This shouldn't have happened. My comment was I couldn't believe that they didn't do the 2 second look down at your seat. Is that so hard? Isn't that a common act before one sits down? Or should I be able to comfortably sit anyone, just because the circumstances permit that by the fallacy of "common sense" that something should be done to my seat before I sit, especially because I paid for my seat? This mistake is unforgivable from the airline, but seriously, if the urine was in a puddle to be soaked up into the pants, and she didn't notice it at all?
Ugh, the smell alone had to be awful. I feel sorry for all of the passengers who had to sit close to that seat.
@phospholipid: It is possible for a seat, especially one that is upholstered, to still be damp underneath, in the cushioning, and be relatively innocuous-looking on the surface.
@Black Bellamy: what would the lawsuit be for? she already got the price of her pants and the ticket.
@causticitty: "Don't worry sir...we'll just place this nylon slipcover (plastic bag) over the seat...you won't smell a thing afterward!"
@phospholipid: Absolutely. With the way people walk around just peeing themselves in public places these days, it only makes sens to check. When I travel, I ALWAYS examine my seat for the urine of the previous passenger before sitting down. Anybody who doesn't and ends up in this situation deserves exactly what they get. Crybaby.
/sarcasm
@ideagirl: your thinly veild sarcasm makes you a great asset to this forum.
no, i am not suggesting that everyone pee's everywhere. i'm suggesting that i take a 1-2 second glimpse [at best] at my seat to see if it's wet, has an object on it, or even remains of an object. it takes literally 2 seconds, but your belligerent comment suggests only urine. I also didn't state anything about "gets when they deserve", the comment was a "that sucks, if she checked it would have helped".
As for the seat soaking comment, I find it hard to believe without empirical evidence that seat cushion of could withhold that much urine, and not be dripping or noticeably wet, to the point where she sat down and her pants became wet, AND AFTERWARDS he pants remained visibly wet.
@UCLAJason:
There is always IIED - Intentional infliction of emotional distress [en.wikipedia.org] or NIED - Negligent infliction of emotional distress [en.wikipedia.org]
@Buran: Actually urine isn't sterile as it can contain blood particles which are nearly undetectable to the naked eye.
When will someone invent the IT?