Southwest Airlines Flight Diverted To Las Vegas Due To Non-Functioning Toilet

The Southwest Airlines Boeing aircraft with the malfunctioning lavatories was able to take off from Las Vegas after two hours to resume its flight to the designated airport.

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Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max aircraft was diverted during its flight because all toilets were 'out of service'. Various reports online suggest that the aircraft flying from Oakland to Chicago was diverted to Las Vegas after the problem was noticed. As per The Aviation Herald's report, flight WN1923 was at about 37,000 feet when the crew decided to divert the plane to Las Vegas because of non-functioning toilets. It is to be noted that the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft in the situation has three lavatories, two of them at the rear and one at the front end of the aircraft.

The details of the problem with the lavatories of the aircraft are scarce. However, reports suggest that the aircraft with registration N8837Q has been delivered to airlines 4 months ago (January 2023), and hence the probability of malfunctions with the aircraft's systems is low.

The plane touched down and stayed in Las Vegas for two hours before taking off again. According to data from FlightRadar24.com, WN1923 continued its journey at 09:31 from LAS and arrived at MDW at 14:27 local time. The passengers arrived in Chicago almost 2.5 hours after the service's scheduled arrival time of 12:00 local.

This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. In 2022, a Jet2 flight from Las Palmas to Manchester was diverted to Bilbao for Jet2 flight from Las Palmas to Manchester was diverted to Bilbao because of a similar reason. In the incident, the lavatories on an Airbus A31 aircraft were reported to be out of order. The Airbus A321's waste tanks were emptied while it was on the ground, indicating that the "outage" was probably caused by a full waste tank.

The reason for the out-of-service lavatories on the Southwest Airlines plane could have also been the same. Since ground crews at the airport are in charge of these kinds of tasks, leaving with a full waste tank would seem to be a mistake on the part of airport staff.