United Airlines really managed to outdo themselves with their latest mechanical problem this weekend, as a flight bound for SFO had to be diverted because of sewage flowing into the flight cabin.
Mechanical issues on board United Airlines flights to or from SF International Airports are starting to feel like an everyday occurrence. The latest of these was on Thursday night, when a flight from SFO to Paris had to be diverted to Denver because of engine issues.
But boy did United Airlines passengers have a terrible Friday night, the very next evening. The Hill reports that seven passengers had to be hospitalized after turbulence and high winds forced a flight from Newark, New Jersey from Tel Aviv to be rerouted to New Windsor, New York. Then according to the Chronicle, another United flight Friday night from Frankfurt, Germany to SFO had to be rerouted because its toilet was overflowing into the flight cabin.
Man, talk about a shitty flight!
The plane was reportedly forced to fly over the North Sea for a while a flummoxed crew tried to figure out how they were going to resolve this mess. After two hours that must have been excruciating for passengers, the flight did eventually divert back to Frankfurt. And notably, this was a Boeing 777, the same company that is currently facing a criminal probe by the Department of Justice over a January incident where a plane’s door plug blew off during a flight.
With regard to Friday's incident, United Airlines said in a bare-bones statement to The Hill simply that there was a “maintenance issue with one of the aircraft’s lavatories.”
But there certainly have been maintenance issues with a lot of United flights lately. In addition to the above-mentioned incidents, there was a tire falling off a jet and landing on cars in the SFO parking lot on March 7. Two weeks prior to that, a piece of a wing flap tore off of a United flight from SFO to Boston. On March 8, a United Airbus jet from SFO to Mexico City had a hydraulic problem and was forced to land at LAX. And three days later, an SFO-bound United flight from Sydney, Australia had to turn back to Sydney over an unspecified "maintenance issue."
Plus on March 23, a United flight from SFO to Denver had to turn back to San Francisco after the plane struck a bird.
Image: Arkin Si via Unsplash
