Cathay Pacific flights are being plagued by mysterious toilet blockages on its Airbus fleet, with one packed passenger plane forced to make an unscheduled landing in India because it had no working lavatories on board.
Toilets on Airbus A330 and A340 planes have been blocking up, with three incidents occurring in 10 days, leaving some flights unable to take off with a full complement of passengers because all toilets on one side of the plane were out of service.
In the worst case, a flight from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia to Hong Kong on November 17 carrying 278 passengers was forced to divert to Mumbai when flight attendants discovered shortly after take-off that none of the plane's 10 toilets was working.
The plane had taken off with only the toilets on one side of the aircraft working and when those packed in, the crew had to divert to India to fix the problem, causing an 18-hour delay to what should have been an eight-hour flight.
Two other flights were affected by blocked toilets - one from Rome to Hong Kong on November 9 and one from Dubai to Hong Kong on November 19.
In both cases, the number of passengers had to be restricted to less than 240 when it was discovered before take-off that only the toilets on one side of the plane were working. Cathay Pacific and Airbus both said last night they were unsure about the exact cause of the spate of blockages - which occurred mostly on the right side of the aircraft - but an airline spokeswoman insisted the problem was being tackled with a maintenance operation for the fleet.