No one climbs on a 19-seat turbo prop aircraft traveling between Newfoundland and Labrador and expects a luxury travel experience. Passengers on a flight last month normally would have expected access to a bathroom during the three-hour flight, though. One family who paid $800 per person for their tickets were stunned when a fellow passenger relieved himself into a bag while he sat next to them. Shortly after takeoff. No sense in waiting.

The man apparently had missed announcements in the airport about the lack of amenities on the small plane. Like school field trip chaperones, staff warned passengers that the plane was smaller than usual, there would be no facilities on the plane, and they should go now.

Biological urges must be obeyed, though, and one man on board apparently missed the warning. One passenger traveling with her two children told the CBC that her neighbor asked whether the plane had a rest room available. Nope, she told him, because she had actually been paying attention back at the airport.

“So a couple of moments later we started going up in the air,” she told reporters, “and he tapped me on the shoulder and he said, ‘Can you move your son? I need to pee.'” He relieved himself into a bag, after the woman’s six-year-old son was out of the way. Sure, if anyone understands biological imperatives, it’s small kids, but the woman still found it gross.

The airline, it turns out, had swapped out the scheduled aircraft for the turbo prop due to “mechanical problems.” An aircraft with twenty or more seats would have had a bathroom: this plane had nineteen seats and normally flies shorter routes.

“This was a very unfortunate experience and we will be responding directly to this customer,” an Air Canada representative told the CBC.

Man pees in bag on no-bathroom Air Canada Express flight [CBC]

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