United Airlines flight 2080 from Tampa to Newark declared a medical emergency over Philadelphia on Sunday with a biohazard on board.
Passengers had been told after takeoff that “they would not be permitted to leave their seats” for the entire flight due to weather-related turbulence expected for the full flight.
Cabin crew would not be getting up, either – and “that includes to unlock the bathroom doors.”
There really was quite a bit of weather.
Those on board, naturally, began getting antsy. It doesn’t appear they were told prior to the flight they would not have bathroom access. On a departure from Florida.
The median age of people on this flight is probably 68. People are starting to hit the emergency call button. Multiple times. I am praying there has not been a bio hazard accident. This is about to get wild.
The flight got priority to land, arriving earlier than expected at Newark and with a flight time 23 minutes shorter than the day before.
That’s because of the medical emergency that gave them a “sling shot to front of the line to Newark approach.”
A “young boy who they basically had to have two Port Authority officers slowly shuffle down the aisle” had wound up “throwing up multiple times” on the flight.
“Blood present. Not pretty. That plane is now a biohazard.” Much more time in the air without lavatories and there would have been other biohazards, too, one imagines.
One flight attendant offers that this is going to be standard procedure during turbulence,
[United] just sent an email out 3 days that we are not to get up during turbulence to unlock the lavs for passengers. i agree this is a huge issue, i think we need to stop being required to lock them before takeoff for instances like this because its unfair to passengers but also completely unsafe for us to risk our safety to unlock it
Normally it’s fine – at your own risk – to use the lavatory when the seat belt sign is on.
When you ask a flight attendant if it’s ok they aren’t going to say that it is (they don’t want to assume liability) but they usually won’t stop you. If the lavatories are locked, though, you’re out of luck.
American Airlines has flown New York to Chicago without a lavatory before but passengers knew in advance they’d have to hold it for the duration of the trip. (On a flight to Hawaii, American told passengers to go in a bottle when the lavatories became inoperable.)
There’s a certain length of flight where you might choose not to delay or cancel over a lavatory.
At least if passengers know about the issue in advance they can make a quick calculation over whether they’re capable of flying under those conditions (on the Florida departure some may even be wearing Depends!).
Without advance warning though things can get pretty dicey pretty fast.
