OUT OF THE BLUE
Lessons from "The Lavatory Zone"
By Elliott Hester

Earlier this month aboard a United Airlines flight from Miami to Buenos Aires, Argentina, a enraged passenger (a Uruguayan banker, no less) kicked a hole in the cockpit door. He then stuck his head and torso through the hole and was introduced to the blunt end of an axe, which was wielded by the startled co-pilot (luckily for the assailant, the co-pilot chose not to use the other end).

The plane landed safely in Buenos Aires. The banker, headachy and more than a little embarrassed, is now in the custody of U.S. authorities.

Strange things sometimes happen in the confines of a cockpit. But the weirdest stories – the real Twilight Zone episodes – often occur in another airplane compartment. A place familiar to your rear end and mine. "A place," as Rod Serling might have said, "known as The Lavatory Zone."

Cramped, grimy and occasionally malodorous, the lavatory's main function is obvious: shall it be a No. 1 or a No. 2? Shall I sit down and flip through a copy of U.S. News & World Report, or should I get down to business in consideration of waiting passengers.

Yet on many occasions, passengers choose to use lavatories to gain entry into the Mile-High Club – that infamous society of in-flight contortionists who seem hell-bent on getting their groove on.

Earlier this month, passengers aboard an American Airlines Flight 101 from London to New York experienced a Mile-High liaison of grand proportions. Flight attendants told the captain that two British men were acting suspiciously.

According to the crew the two men made four or five trips to the lavatory. Each time they entered the cramped compartment together. According to Federal Aviation Administration officials, "Air Force officials overheard the captain's radio dispatch to American Airlines operations and sent two F-16s to intercept the jetliner over the Atlantic Ocean." The plane landed safely in New York where authorities detained the two men. Police say the men admitted smoking crack cocaine in the lavatory. They also admitted to having sex.

A fellow flight attendant told me of another embarrassing sex-in-the-lav story. Soon after a man and woman entered the lavatory together, a flight attendant call button rang. It rang again and again, in a rhythmic pattern that was not unlike the bell at a train crossing. Realizing that the call emanated from the lavatory in which the couple had entered, and that the call button was being bumped repeatedly during the throes of passion, flight attendants stood outside and waited. When the door finally opened, the red-faced couple was presented with a bottle of champagne.

According to recent reports from Reuters, The BBC and other news agencies, a Scandinavian jetliner (SAS) was the scene of a lavatory atrocity. An American woman made the mistake of flushing before standing up and became wedged in by the powerful vacuum action of the 767s flushing mechanism. "She could not get up by herself and had to sit on the toilet until the flight had landed," said an SAS spokeswoman.

Now SAS is saying the incident never occurred. But the phenomenon is not unheard of. A flight attendant at my airline once dealt with a woman who became stuck to the toilet after flushing. Embarrassed, the woman drank several alcohol minis before mechanics walked into the lavatory to pry her loose.

Not to be outdone by passengers, I've had my own embarrassing lavatory experience. During one particular flight to the Caribbean, I stood before the toilet on a Boeing 727, eyes closed, pants gathered around my ankles, answering the primal call of nature. But before I had a chance to get down to business, I found myself mashed against the ceiling with my feet dangling precariously above the toilet.

I seemed to float toward the ceiling in a slow-motion ascent that, for a moment, made me think I was dreaming. I was an astronaut in the middle of a weightlessness experiment. A wayward British passenger, high on crack cocaine. With my back pressed high against the lavatory wall, neck bent against the ceiling at an angle that only a Mile-High Club contortionist could appreciate, I was at the mercy of God and aircraft dynamics.

The experience brought back childhood memories of an amusement park ride. Twenty or thirty people entered a large round room devoid of straps or any safety apparatus. The door shut behind us. A disembodied voice then instructed us to lean back against the wall. The room spun slowly at first, then picked up speed, with the centrifugal force pinning us against the spinning wall. Then the floor dropped, and we spun around and around, stuck to the wall like wet clothes in the final wash cycle.

In the next split second, I watched in horror as a couple of gallons of d-germ came splashing out of the toilet and onto my pants. (D-germ is the pungent blue chemical that swishes around the toilet bowl after every flush. It's designed to break down waste and mask unpleasant odors by creating an unpleasant odor of its own.)

The airplane suddenly regained its composure. Gravity reestablished its grip. My feet hit the floor and I came sprawling through the open lavatory door.

Nobody on the plane was injured. Everyone, including my fellow crew members, had been wearing seat belts. Startled and soaked, I strapped myself into the jump seat, another sad and lowly traveler in The Lavatory Zone.