Plane with 84 Plumbers on Board Forced to Make Emergency Landing for Ironic Reason
Airplanes make emergency landings for all sorts of reasons. Some of these extreme landings usually involve a serious aircraft issue or medical situation.
But, it may (or may not) surprise you that many force landings are often done for the strangest reasons.
Pilots have been known to end flights early because of a baby’s birth, bad odors in the air, and more recently, a broken toilet that led to a potty break.
That last example may not actually seem out of the ordinary, especially when traveling on a six-hour flight. Passengers would have to use the restroom at some point, right?
Well, it wasn’t that unusual for a Norwegian air shuttle. They made a similar emergency landing on Tuesday, Jan. 30.
Their toilets had become clogged just 15 minutes into their journey and could only be fixed if the plane was grounded.
According to the Norwegian newspaper, Dagbladet, the two-hour flight was traveling from Oslo to Munich when they were forced to stop at the Sweden border.
But the most ironic part of it all was that there were 84 plumbers on board at the time on their way to Munich.
Even with their expertise, the work couldn’t be done from the inside. The plumbing company’s managing director said his staff didn’t have the right equipment to do so.
Their only solution was to tackle the problem outside of the aircraft, which wouldn’t have been the safest idea while in-flight.
“We’d have gladly fixed the toilets, but it must unfortunately be done from the outside and we didn’t want to take a chance on sending out a plumber at 10,000 meters altitude,” managing director Frank Olson stated.
Even so, the emergency landing wasn’t a nuisance, but a rather a laughable moment for everyone on board.
“There was a good atmosphere in the plane with the irony about the broken toilets,” Olso also added.
‘Is there a plumber on board?’
A Norwegian flight with 84 plumbers on board turned back to Oslo this weekend because a problem with the toilets.
?? https://t.co/lUPlJIxGMU #DY1156 pic.twitter.com/s6KgfLJZkg
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 30, 2018
The issue was fixed in Gardermoen and the flight eventually made it to its destination, though it was over an hour late.
Thankfully, it looks like this plumbing issue will be a funny memory to look back on for a long time to come.
“So many plumbers on an aircraft and it has to turn back due to toilet trouble,” Plumber Hans Christian Ødegård chuckled about the situation. “That is enough to make you laugh.”
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