While they may appear easy to resolve mid-flight with a quick cleaning, bathroom problems are a fairly common reason for a flight diversion because of how fast the smell can travel through the cabin.
This week, a United Airlines (UAL) flight from Houston to Seattle had to make an emergency landing in Dallas after what one passenger aboard the flight was a “messy accident in the aisle right in first class.”
Related: Wondering why the plane smells bad? You're not the only one
“Dog had messy accident in the aisle right in first class, plane diverted to DFW,” a traveler under the username r/gig_wizard wrote in the United Airlines forum on the social media platform Reddit (RDDT) . “Ground crew spent over 2 hours cleaning carpets with paper towels. Smell made me ill.”
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‘The smell never quite went away’
He attached a photo of the mess left by the dog (you can view it here but we will not be sharing it zoomed-in) in the aisle between the seats and kept describing the chaos that ensued after it happened.
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“Gate agents kept yelling at passengers and the cabin crew,” the traveler wrote. “The smell never quite went away. First class toilet declared unusable as the dog mess was apparently unresolved in there. Food went bad while on the ground so very few snacks left.”
Flight Radar data first spotted by Business Insider showed that the flight ended up being diverted to Dallas but United could not be reached for comment on the situation. The airline has been dealing with an FAA investigation over a series of safety incidents that, while causing no injuries, resulted in a lot of bad press and scrutiny for the airline.
Readers of the United subreddit, meanwhile, wasted no time weighing in with their own stories of pets behaving badly both on flights with United and other airlines.
“I was on a flight once where there was a service dog (Chicago to Allentown),” described a traveler using the r/Salty-Illustrator376 username. “Flight was turbulent. The moment that flight landed and got to the gate, and that exit door opened, that dog beat everyone off the plane and sh-t all over the jetway. We were delayed by 15 minutes getting off the plane as they had to clean it up.”
‘Diapers on dogs from now on for the entire flight’
“Diapers on dogs from now on for the entire flight,” another person jokingly wrote (the comment was one of the most heavily upvoted.)
The issue of dogs and other pets small enough to be inside the cabin is a particularly controversial one. In 2019, airlines tried experimenting with allowing more passengers to bring their pets aboard flights as "emotional support animals” but the issues and high number of in-air incidents that came with that pushed both the U.S. Department of Transportation and individual airlines to retighten them again.
In 2024, only animals below a certain size can be brought inside the cabin; they are also subject to an extra pet transportation fee and must stay in the carrier throughout the length of the flight — something the animal aboard the United flight clearly did not do.
