A United Airlines flight from Paris to Washington Dulles ended up making an emergency diversion and dumping 33,000 pounds of fuel in the process, on Sunday evening, after three of the washrooms stopped working only an hour after the plane took off.
Rather than taking the risk of making a transatlantic crossing with the prospect of even more of the washrooms being taken out of service (or the threat of them becoming so backed up that waste starts flooding out), the pilots decided to return to France – and in doing so, made every passenger onboard eligible for €600 in compensation.
The incident occurred onboard United flight UA-331 from Paris Charles de Gaulle, which departed at around 5:20 pm on September 28. The aircraft was being operated by a Boeing 767-300 with just seven toilets onboard.
The decision to get the plane back on the ground so that engineers could get the washrooms working again presented an immediate problem: the aircraft had been loaded with enough fuel for the nine-hour flight from Europe to the East Coast.
At the point that the pilots decided to divert back to Paris, around an hour into the flight, and while above Manchester, England, the aircraft would still have been significantly above its maximum landing weight.
There are two options in this type of situation: Either enter a holding pattern to burn off the excess fuel and reduce the weight of the aircraft or jettison fuel to quickly get the plane down to a safe landing weight.
Latest Articles
In this case, passengers report that the pilots took the latter option, dumping fuel from the aircraft’s fuel tank at high altitude. Presumably, the pilots decided that entering a holding pattern for an hour or more wasn’t the best solution for anyone on board with a full bladder.
“After all my years of flying, I never thought my first emergency diversion would be a bathroom issue,” one passenger commented on Reddit. “Huge credit to all the crew. They’ve been awesome in keeping us calm and handling it like pros.”
Thankfully, the plane was back on the ground by 7 pm, where the passengers were able to use the airport restrooms before United rebooked them onto alternative flights to the United States.
Washroom ratio
With a total of 214 seats onboard and seven washrooms, United Boeing 767s have a fairly generous washroom-to-passenger ratio of 31 passengers per washroom.
With three washrooms out of service, the washroom-to-passenger ratio becomes 54 passengers per washroom.
That, however, still compares favourbly to the new Qantas A321XLR, which only has one lavatory onboard for every 90 passengers!
Meanwhile, the broken airplane (registration: N644UA) is due to return to Washington Dulles on Monday evening, although public flight tracking data shows that the plane will be positioned back to a United maintenance base without passengers onboard.
Would passengers be able to claim compensation?
In this incident, it would be hard to imagine a situation in which passengers would not be eligible for compensation under the European Union’s passenger rights regulations – commonly known as EC261 (also sometimes referred to as EU261).
In circumstances in which passengers are delayed in getting to their final destination by three hours or more, airlines must pay up to €600 in compensation per passenger.
The actual compensation limit is set by the flight distance:
| 1,500 km or less | €250 | $292 |
| More than 1,500 km within the EU 1,501 to 3,500 km for all other flights | €400 | $468 |
| 3,501 or more | €600 | $703 |
As you can see, as the flight between Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) and Washington Dulles (IAD) clocks in at 6,213 km, passengers on United flight UA-331 could be entitled to $600 in compensation each.
Airlines do not have to pay compensation if they can prove the delay was due to an ‘extraordinary circumstance.’ While never defined by lawmakers, various courts have found that maintenance issues are a part of everyday airline operations and cannot be considered an extraordinary circumstance.
