Passengers were forced to urinate in cups and plastic bags during recent flights on Air Labrador because there were no working bathrooms on the planes or at the airports.
Johanna Tuglavina was on an Air Labrador flight from Hopefale to Nain on Monday when she found out that the plane she was on didn't have a toilet. She then found that the bathrooms at the two airstrips her flight stopped at weren't working, CBC reports.
She had to go outside to urinate before leaving Hopedale because the bathroom was out of order and when she asked to use the restroom during a stop in Natuashish, she also found that it wasn't working.
"I said [to the pilot], 'Gee, boy, I'm going to have to use that empty Tim Hortons cup back there because I really gotta use the washroom,' and he had a little smile on his face and he said, 'Well, there's a little bag out there too if you need to use it,' so I used both of it," Tuglavina said.
Then her flight was unable to land in Nain and had to circle back around to Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Tuglavina resorted to using an empty coffee cup and a plastic bag to urinate it.
"I had to wake up a passenger in order to hold on to my jacket while I used the washroom on the plane where there's other people sitting down, right, as cover to have a little bit of privacy, at least," she said.
Tuglavina called the incident embarrassing but she had no other choice. "It was a choice between peeing in my pants, or peeing in a Tim Hortons cup," she said.
This comes a week after a man peed in a plastic bag on an Air Canada Express flight to Labrador. The planes and the airports don't seem to have working bathrooms and Liberal MHA Randy Edmunds says it's time to fix the problem.
"This winter we've had cases of 40, 45 C below where passengers have to duck out behind the building to use the bathroom [outside]. In this day and age, it's not necessary and I don't think it's that hard with the technology these days to go and assess the situation and install a system," Edmunds told CBC.
"I think it takes a story like the one about the passenger on the plane ... a lot of people just take it for granted the toilets are going to freeze up, it's a common thing, but people are just starting to realize that, 'Hey, this is not good enough,'" he said. "We should be able to have the same as everyone else in the province in their airports."
He suggests that potable toilets should be added to the airport so people don't have to go outside or in cups or bags. He plans on bringing the issue up to the House of Assembly.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
