An Alaska Airlines flight that was on its way from Hawaii to Alaska turned around after a bathroom on the flight flooded the aisles of the Boeing 737 Max 9 jet with water, according to Alaska News Source.
The incident is the most recent in a slew of issues with Boeing flights over the last few months.
The flight from Honolulu to Anchorage departed after 10:00 p.m. Friday night and was in the air for just 90 minutes when the front bathroom suddenly began to malfunction, ultimately leading to flooding in the aisle of the aircraft.
Instead of continuing the six-hour flight to Alaska, the captain of Alaska Airlines flight 828 decided to turn back to Hawaii to have the problem resolved. Footage of the incident was posted to YouTube, where flight attendants can be seen trying to soak up as much water as possible with paper towels and blankets.
Dustin Parker — a passenger on the flight — said that “there was probably two to four inches of standing water that swooshed out as soon as you opened that front door of the lavatory.”
“I would say an hour and a half into the flight is when we noticed the water and it was significant. The entire floorboards of that airplane were completely wet.”
The issue is believed to have originated from the bathroom sink, not the toilet, according to the Daily Mail. A flight map revealed that the flight was in the air for almost two-and-a-half hours before safely landing back in Hawaii at 12:30 a.m.
Reports stated that the passengers were rebooked on other flights because there was no other plane at the airport to take them back to Anchorage.
The airline said the following in a statement: “We apologize to our guests for the inconvenience this caused and commend the crew for their actions to ensure the well-being and comfort of our guests.”
Alaska Airlines made headlines at the beginning of the year after a door plug blew out on a Boeing 737 Max 9 — the same model of plane that the flooding occurred in. The Department of Justice opened an investigation into Boeing following the door issue.
Boeing has been at the center of scandals over the past few years, including the mysterious death of John Barnett, who was in the process of giving testimony about quality checks for Boeing’s aircraft earlier this year. While Barnett’s death has been ruled a suicide, some are skeptical of this conclusion.
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News, Alaska airlines, Boeing, Flood