United flight to San Francisco returns to Frankfurt airport after toilet mishap
Yet another United Airlines flight bound for San Francisco was forced to return to its point of origin on Friday when a Boeing 777 out of Germany had "a maintenance issue with one of the aircraft's lavatories," according to airline officials.
German media outlet Bild said that some passengers reported that the contents of one of the plane's toilets flowed into the main cabin on United flight 59 Friday. The scheduled 12-hour flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco was cut short after the incident led the pilot to circle over the North Sea before returning to the Frankfurt Airport.
United said that after the plane landed, the passengers were provided with overnight hotel accommodations and flown to San Francisco the following day.
It was the latest United flight to have issues, with many of the problems involving flights to or from San Francisco. The day before the Frankfurt toilet mishap, another United international flight from San Francisco to Paris was forced to divert to Denver due to an engine issue.
A week before that, the fuselage panel of a United Airlines flight — a Boeing 737-800 — was discovered missing after the plane landed at an airport in Medford, Oregon, after having departed San Francisco, officials said.
The rash of incidents on United flights stretch back to March 4, with multiple United aircrafts facing problems that forced flights to return to their point of departure or make emergency landings, including a wheel coming off a Boeing 777.
In response, United CEO Scott Kirby said the airline is reviewing the series of what he called "unrelated" cases and adding extra training for pilots.