Hold that thought for 16 hours: Choked toilets spell trouble on US-bound Air India flight

Imagine a scenario where you're flying 16 hours non-stop only to realise that four out of the 12 toilets on the flight aren't functioning. That's what happened to 331 individuals (323 adults and seven infants) travelling on a Boeing 777 Air India flying between New Delhi and Chicago.

According to a report, the flight had taken off at 2 am from New Delhi. According to Air India officials, four of its 12 toilets were clogged and we tried to clear them by nitrogen flushing but could not do so. Since the aircraft was booked to take a full of passengers to Chicago from Delhi and no alternate aircraft could be arranged at such a short notice, it was felt that the eight functional toilets will be enough for the journey and the plane was released under minimum equipment list (meaning with an issue that can be tackled later).

But this calculation proved very wrong. By the time the plane crossed the Atlantic and was over Canada (AI nonstop flights take the polar route between India and America's east coast over the Atlantic), the other toilets started packing up. When about one or two hours away from the destination, ALL the toilets got full and could not be used.

The only solace Air India can have is that the flight was only 16 hours. In 2014, the Carnival, a US-based cruise liner had 4,000 passengers when a fire knocked out the ship's power. According to CNN, the ship drifted four days before it could be towed into Mobile, Alabama -- the whole time without air conditioning, and largely without lights, water, food and working toilets. People have recounted horror stories of how sewage and human waste was put in bags and kept outside rooms, earning the ship the unimaginative name 'the poop cruise'.