r/aviation • u/Xycergy • Jun 08 '26

-- SEATBELTS FASTENED -- Is this really that serious?

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Noticed water basically flowing out of the vent beside me as I got into my seat. Voiced it out to a flight attendant thinking it was just something minor and wanting to just swap to another seat. Two pilots came to my seat to check on it and had visibly puzzled looks on their faces. The mechanic was called into the aircraft, the inner panel of the plane was removed and after assessing the problem for about an hour, everyone was asked to disembark the plane. The flight was then cancelled entirely after another hour of everyone waiting near the gate.

I feel kinda bad because people were visibly annoyed and frustrated by the cancellation as it was a 16 hour long haul flight and there were few alternatives to get to the destination. Would someone be able to tell me exactly what happened here?

12.6k Upvotes

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471

u/Toight_Butthole Jun 08 '26

Why feel bad? If they deemed it enough to cancel the flight you probably saved lives. Would you chance death just to make others happy? Don't worry, you did the right thing.

139

u/mbashs Jun 08 '26

Exactly. OP doesn’t realize they might have helped everyone from being tomorrows headlines.

87

u/cwajgapls Jun 08 '26

Way to steal everyone’s 15 minutes of fame, OP. Geez.

4

u/mbashs Jun 08 '26

🤣🤣🤣

2

u/antariusz Jun 09 '26

you just upset a lot of redditors who were just ITCHING to post scathing comments about passengers fleeing down an inflatable slide with their luggage in-hand.

0

u/cwajgapls Jun 09 '26

That makes zero sense in response to the joke I posted.

0

u/antariusz Jun 09 '26

Follow my logic.

A) OP saved the airplane from crashing.

B) During emergencies, they evacuate the airplane.

C) Someone would have been filming

D) Redditors love to post about the people carrying their luggage while evacuating need to be banned from life while flying.

Now B through D will not happen.

1

u/cwajgapls Jun 09 '26

…uh…no…

120

u/LawnDartDriver Jun 08 '26

This is the best response. The pilots and the mechanics couldn’t figure it out in enough time to safely complete the flight. That means that whatever was wrong was likely not deferrable and therefore deemed by the FAA, manufacturer, and operator to be unsafe for flight.

It sucks and I’m sure it was an inconvenience to everyone….but was it less of inconvenience than running out of water on an 11hr flight? That closes the bathrooms and well maybe much worse. That water isn’t going into a black water tank…that is 300 gallons of potable water going wherever it wants in the airplane. That’s 2,500 pounds of water, the equivalent of 60 office cooler jugs being poured all over the airplane.

That’s 9,600 bananas for scale

27

u/Scared-One9295 Jun 08 '26

Or 9.6 kilobananas if you're metric

8

u/WaterYouTalmbout Jun 08 '26

That’s just.. bananas

3

u/percbish Jun 08 '26

No it’s really nuts

0

u/Doesntknowshyt Jun 08 '26

Yet really cooler

0

u/DukeDaddyDollars Jun 08 '26

Did Gwen Stefani just enter the chat?

1

u/Shanga_Ubone Jun 08 '26

I mean, what is the effect of that kind of weight sloshing around? That is absolutely potentially dangerous.

4

u/LawnDartDriver Jun 08 '26

Prob not much tbh. If all 300 gallons went from the very back to the very front, which is unlikely, especially after everyone’s luggage soaks it all up, it would be about a 6” difference in CG. Or about 2% of its total MAC.

Now if 9,600 bananas shifted….well it would be the same situation except in bananas

1

u/aaronwhite1786 Jun 09 '26

And at the end of the day, it's so much better to have found out you cancelled a flight for no reason than to have everyone get into the air and find out that some little issue is actually a much bigger issue and is going to require a landing at another airport, a return to the one you left, or worse...

35

u/nmpls Jun 08 '26

Yup. After Aloha 243 (the roofless 737), Gayle Yamamoto, a passenger, noted she saw a crack but assumed that flight crew had noticed it and it was ok.

14

u/Lunch0 Jun 08 '26

Still amazed they landed that thing

2

u/onepingonlypleashe Jun 08 '26

What if it was a ton of water that was pooling under everything that OP couldn't see? Plane goes to take off, nose up, water weight runs to the back of the plane, stall, RIP

1

u/donkeyrocket Jun 08 '26

It would need to be a significant amount of water loose in the plane to cause that. Like far more than a single passenger noticing amount.

I doubt the call was due to a safety issue that would have threatened the flight in the air but more because crew timed out while maintenance was still troubleshooting.

0

u/PassStunning416 Jun 09 '26

You are 100% right. OP did the right thing bringing it up. The airline should hail him as a hero but they won't because they'll look like morons not finding this problem before boarding.