Passengers on an Air India flight from Chicago to Delhi were forced to endure a ten-hour flight to nowhere last Wednesday after nine of the ten toilets onboard became clogged less than halfway into the journey. And now we’ve learned precisely why nearly all the onboard lavatories came to be blocked.
It turns out that one of the passengers had been flushing their clothing down one of the toilets, which, unsurprisingly, became entangled in the pipes and completely blocked the waste disposal system.
Air India flight AI-126 departed Chicago O’Hare at around 11:20 am on March 5 for what should have been a long but routine 13 hours flight to Delhi, which would see the pilots of Boeing 777-300 airplane fly a northerly route across Canada, Greenland, and the Atlantic before passing through Russian airspace.
Last Wednesday, the flight departed as usual and flew across Canada, the Labrador Sea, and even past Greenland before it suddenly turned back on itself and started heading straight back for Chicago.
At the time, the passengers were aware there was a major issue with the onboard toilets, although it wasn’t until today that it became clear what the cause of the blockage was.
Photos shared online showed the gruesome job that Air India’s engineers had in dismantling parts of the sewage system and pulling out stained clothing from the packed pipes.
It turns out it wasn’t just one item of clothing that had been flushed but multiple garments; even an airline blanket found its way down the toilet.
The 15-year-old aircraft involved in the incident stayed in Chicago for two days before being flown back to Delhi without passengers, where it has remained ever since while engineers work to get the sewage system back in working order.
The passengers on Flight 126 were made to fly all the way back to Chicago, arriving back exactly where they started nearly ten hours later. Once on the ground, the airline managed to find the passengers hotel accommodation, and they were eventually accommodated on alternative flights.
Frequent flyer and travel blogger Ajay Awtaney from Live From a Lounge shared photos of the gruesome extraction on X and shared in one post: “There is a reason why cabin crew from many carriers abhor Indian flights. This is just some proof of how things go really really wrong.”
In another post, Awtaney countered suggestions that the flight had been sabotaged, saying: “Folks, I would love to believe your Sabotage Theories. But this is plain stupidity/foolishness/ignorance until proven otherwise. Once the main lav system chokes, vacuum stops working. And the rest of the lavs clog up because nothing is sucking your droppings away
