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United pilot attacks passenger for taking too long in the bathroom, lawsuit alleges
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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Yeah. They can't land the plane with you in the bathroom, and they can't keep circling forever burning fuel and delaying however many people from their connecting flights, because you don't feel like you can be comfortable if you have to not be pooping for the length of time it takes to get back on the ground.
It is a violation of federal law to disobey certain types of instructions from the crew on an airplane for exactly this type of reason. It's not just a request which is open to negotation depending on what you feel is reasonable and how stubborn you feel like being, because there are physical realities and limitations at play. I think the pilot probably came into the picture because it was a decision of "if someone is going to have to drag this person out of the bathroom physically with his pants down, because that's the only option he's leaving us, we would rather it be the highest-ranking person on the plane who takes the responsibility." Of course this is pure uninformed speculation about what happened. But I have a pretty strong hunch about how it actually went down. I've dealt with deeply religious people before sometimes.
Maybe they don't want to land the plane with someone in the bathroom, but I have a hard time believing they can't.
Against the law
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/121.311
I'm not a lawyer, but best I can tell from this language, the law is the person operating the plane has to make sure there are seats with restraints, while the people are responsible for using them during takeoff and landing.
I get that for liability reasons, no airline wants to expose themselves by landing without people in their seats. Going further, I interpreted the comment above mine to be saying planes might run out of fuel if the passenger didn't exit the bathroom. My point was no pilot is going to let the plane crash because someone is in the bathroom.
The link that you were sent is regulations that apply to "certificate holders," pilots in this case. The requirement that passengers "shall occupy" their seats means that if the plane lands, and the pilot was aware that someone wasn't in their seat during the landing, the pilot has violated §121.311(b). It's a big deal. The licensing authorities take things like this super seriously, and a pilot who deliberately violated one of those regulations would at a bare minimum have a black mark on their record that they would have to explain when applying for any future job.
Also, no one is saying the pilot is stupid enough to let the plane crash because someone was in the bathroom. Stop using absurd strawmen and please refrain from it in the future.
Enforcing this law is likely the real function of the flight attendant.
That being said, the PIC is responsible for ensuring there is enough fuel for an alternate airport. But also, if you are below 30 min of fuel, that’s an emergency and you get priority handling.
You might have an excuse if you reached that emergency threshold. Without the ATC recording, it’s hard to determine
The pilot could be fired, and it would definitely impact his license. It would be a permanent alteration to his career. In a physical sense, he could choose to. In a practical sense, fuck no, get back in your seat with your seat belt on.
The reason is that if anything goes wrong on landing, the guy in the bathroom could be injured or killed. The airlines have started fucking around, as far as safety, but the regulations about what pilots are allowed to do were still written back when they did not fuck around.
Discovery will be interesting. I hope that the pilot was on the radio with someone asking for advice/providing updates and doing general CYA things before they physically confronted the passenger. I could easily see the pilot being agitated because they were put in that situation, but I also hope there were other interactions leading up to a rapid escalation.