Travel News Today

A passenger jet had an unscheduled stop at Manchester Airport - because the toilets had not been emptied.

The KLM Royal Dutch Airlines jumbo was heading from Amsterdam to Toronto when the cabin crew told the captain there was a problem.

It is thought ground staff at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport had forgotten to empty the plane's toilets before take-off.

That meant more than 300 passengers would not have been able to use the loos as the Boeing 747 made the seven-hour trip across the Atlantic on its way to Canada.

The passengers are said to have been delighted when flight KL691 lifted off again from Manchester 40 minutes later, after engineers corrected the problem.

A spokeswoman for KLM said an error was spotted with the plane's toilet water supply after it took off from Amsterdam on Wednesday.

She said: «The captain decided to divert to Manchester and get it fixed before he headed over the Atlantic.

«He decided to do this for passenger comfort. The problem was fixed and then the aircraft carried on as normal.»

The KLM jumbo, a rare sight at Manchester, was seen landing just before 4pm and took off again just after 4.30pm.

It is thought the captain wanted toilet facilities and water.

The plane is said to have 14 toilets, which drain into four tanks. Each tank carries more than 65 gallons of waste.

Engineers would have had to replace the tanks before the jet took off again.

It is believed the toilets on this type of aircraft stop working when the tanks are full.

Planes get diverted for all sorts of reasons, but diversions caused by a full toilet tank are understood to be very rare. This is not the first embarrassing toilet-related incident on a plane.

Two months ago a pilot locked himself out of his cockpit after he went to the toilet mid-flight. He banged on the door for 10 minutes and begged the co-pilot to let him back inside.

The incident happened on an Air Canada Jazz Bombardier CRJ-100 heading from Ottawa to Winnipeg.

(Manchester Evening News)