A United flight from Paris to DC had to U-turn to avoid flying across the Atlantic without enough working bathrooms

• A United Airlines flight from Paris to Washington, DC, turned back to the French capital.

• An airline spokesperson said there was “an issue with the lavatories.”

• The airplane took off again 25 hours later.

United Airlines passengers confronted a flight to nowhere after a plumbing malfunction on their transatlantic journey.

Sunday’s Flight 331 took off from Paris around 5 p.m. local time and was scheduled to land in Washington, DC, eight hours later.

However, just over an hour into the journey, the Boeing 767 turned around, per data from Flightradar24.

The airplane modified direction while flying over the sea between Scotland and Ireland, and headed back toward France.

It landed back at Charles de Gaulle Airport two and a half hours after taking off.

In a assertion shared with Business Insider, a United spokesperson said the airplane had to divert to “address an issue with the lavatories.”

“The flight landed safely, and customers were rebooked onto the next available flight to their destination,” they added.

Data from Flightradar24 exhibits the same Boeing 767 departed Paris again 25 hours later.

It touched down at Washington Dulles International Airport shortly before 9 p.m. ET on Monday.

This is not the first time that a flight has been compelled to flip around due to a plumbing issue.

In March, Air India passengers confronted a nine-hour flight to nowhere as their Delhi-bound airplane returned to Chicago after most of the airplane’s bathrooms stopped working.

The airline said its investigation discovered “polythene bags, rags, and clothes that had been flushed down and stuck in the plumbing.”

In April 2024, another United Airlines transatlantic flight ended up back where it began when the bathrooms overflowed. The airplane had left Frankfurt for San Francisco before circling over the North Sea.

And a month before that, eight of the 9 bathrooms on a KLM Boeing 787 stopped working, too.

Overall, such incidents are pretty uncommon, but they’ll pressure diversions due to the minimal necessities for passengers’ lavatory amenities.

Returning to where the airplane took off could make it simpler for an airline to reroute passengers and restore any points, as it’s doubtless to have more amenities at an airport it generally flies to.

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