Another plane U-turned over the Atlantic after half its bathrooms stopped working
A flight from Zurich to Washington, DC, returned home after half its bathrooms stopped working.
The airline found a replacement aircraft, so the 220 passengers were delayed less than 5 hours.
It's the second time this month that a plumbing problem has caused a flight to nowhere.
A flight from Switzerland to Washington, DC, had to divert after half the plane's bathrooms stopped working due to a plumbing problem.
According to data from Flightradar24, Sunday's Swiss International Air Lines Flight 76 turned around over the English Channel — the arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Britain and France — about an hour into the journey.
The Airbus A330 landed back in Zurich about two and a half hours after taking off from there, becoming a so-called flight to nowhere.
An airline spokesperson told Business Insider there was a blockage in a toilet pipe. This meant all the toilets on the left-hand side of the plane were rendered unusable as they have an interconnected system.
"With 220 passengers on board, continuing the flight was unfortunately not an option," they added.
The airline's dispatch center "immediately organized a replacement aircraft with a new crew," the spokesperson said. This meant the passengers landed in Washington, DC, with a delay of just under five hours.
While flights to nowhere can be frustrating for passengers, this incident shows how returning to a hub airport can provide better solutions than continuing.
It is easier for airlines to reroute passengers, find new crew, and repair any issues at one of their hub airports than if they divert somewhere closer to the destination.
"Such a delay is of course very annoying for our passengers and we would like to apologize again for the inconvenience," the airline spokesperson said.
"In such situations, we do everything we can to get our passengers to their destination as quickly as possible," they added. "This is always our top priority."
This is the second time this month that a flight has turned around due to faulty bathrooms.
An Air India flight returned to Chicago in a nine-hour ordeal after bags, rags, and clothes had been flushed down toilets and clogged the Boeing 777's plumbing.
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