Airline Passenger Spends a Flight Stuck in the Lavatory. Another Reason to Fly Private

On commercial airplanes, some passengers become annoyed when they end up in the middle seat, or when the person in front of them reclines too suddenly and the coffee goes flying.

One passenger on an hour-and-45-minute SpiceJet flight from Mumbai to Bengaluru, India, undoubtedly wished he had such minor problems. The unnamed 37-year-old spent most of the January 16 flight—including the landing—stuck in the lavatory after its lock malfunctioned. To add insult to injury, he was tossed around even after being instructed, via a note slipped under the door, to secure himself on the commode.

That advice—from a flight attendant—was of limited value, as the toilet is the only seat on an airplane not equipped with a seatbelt. And he was not provided with any medical assistance once he was freed.

This was not the first time a passenger has been trapped in the restroom while in the air. In 2019, a man on a United Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco endured a similar ordeal when the lavatory door refused to open. He was sprung only after the airplane was diverted to Denver and the city’s fire department boarded the aircraft to make the rescue.

Such a scenario is highly unlikely to occur on a private jet, industry insiders say.

"I’ve been on dozens of private jet flights and have never seen anything like this,” says Doug Gollan, founder and president of the fractional, jet card, and memberships buying guide Private Jet Card Comparisons. Subscribers to the guide “say that poor airline service and hassles at airports continue to drive their use of private aviation,” Gollan notes. “More than 50 percent of current private flyers and more than 60 percent of those who are considering private flights say the dysfunctional airline experience is a reason they are flying privately or thinking about it.”

David Vanderzwaag, CEO at Airhawke, which provides engineering, design, and approvals to aircraft conversion and completion centers, explains why a lavatory is less likely to turn into a panic room in reverse when you fly private. “While equipment on private jets and commercial airliners adhere to the same stringent qualification criteria,” he says, “the latches on an airliner will experience greater than 100 times the usage over their lifespan and across a much wider demographic, greatly increasing the likelihood of failure.”

Moreover, a commercial airplane does not necessarily take off in a condition comparable to that of a private aircraft: the inside of a private jet typically appears and functions like the interior of the presidential suite at a Four Seasons hotel—a standard that even a commercial airliner’s first-class cabin would not meet.

“Interior items are not treated with the same care on an airliner as on a business jet, and [commercial airplanes] regularly dispatch with faulty interior equipment, so long as it’s not judged as a significant risk to passenger safety,” Vanderzwaag says. “This is not so with business jets, where the interior is expected to be immaculate and perform exactly as intended on each trip.”

While the United Airlines airplane in 2019 was able to divert to another airport to extract the passenger from the lavatory, a more agile private jet (not requiring a big runway) may be able to land more quickly, at a smaller, closer airport. As Vanderzwaag says, “That is the beauty of flying privately.”

And on a private jet, the toilet may even come equipped with a seatbelt. HondaJet added lavatory seatbelts to its aircraft in 2018. Buckle up to land in true comfort, trapped or not.