A flight operated by the British charter airline Jet2 which was taking holidaymakers home from Gran Canaria off the coast of North Africa to Manchester in Northern England was forced to divert to Bilbao on the Spanish mainland to allow cross-legged passengers to use the toilet after all of the onboard lavatories stopped working.
Jet2 flight LS782 departed Gran Canaria at around 5 pm on Thursday evening but at some point during what should have been a four-hour flight to Manchester all of the lavatories stopped working.
The Airbus A321 used to operate the flight can carry as many as 220 passengers in the configuration chosen by Jet2. The flight path usually routes off the coast of Portugal but on Thursday, the pilots of LS782 headed over the Spanish mainland in search of an airport with adequate toilet facilities.
Flight data courtesy of Flight Radar 24 shows that the eight-year-old aircraft was put into an agonising holding pattern before it was eventually cleared to land in Bilbao.
The aircraft remained on the ground for nearly two hours before continuing its journey to Manchester – presumably with all of the passenger’s bladders empty.
Some reports indicate that all four lavatories onboard the aircraft stopped working because the waste tank was full and had not been emptied in Gran Canaria. The waste tank was reportedly emptied in Bilbao and the lavatories started working again.
Jet2 has been contacted for comment.
Earlier this year, some passengers onboard a JetBlue flight claimed they were told that none of the toilets aboard a nearly four-hour flight from Santo Domingo to Boston weren’t working and they simply had to hold themselves.
It turns out, however, that the lavatories were working all along and that some passengers were unnecessarily left in discomfort for the duration of the flight.
JetBlue says it had no idea where the misunderstanding arose.
