A few weeks ago an Indian court ordered airlines in that country to stop dumping lavatory poo on residents below.
The court wants to see India’s safety regulator investigate airlines proactively in the future with surprise inspections of aircraft waste tanks when they land — fining airlines 50,000 rupees “every time their human waste tanks are found empty.”
I’m somewhat skeptical that these incidents really happen. Testing of the excrement apparently found humans as the source, but birds couldn’t be scientifically ruled out.
I’m even more skeptical of the story of a Utah woman who says planes are dropping poop in her driveway.
The woman lives 15 miles from Salt Lake City, so there’s a good chance that if this is real that Delta is the perpetrator.
The allegedly dropped droppings were splattered across her concrete driveway and all over her white Cadillac SUV.
…’The nice gift left all over my driveway and car from the airline that flys (sic) over our house…chunks of human feces!’
…she showed exactly how far the waste spread outside her house.
She claims this has happened before, and she’s getting news coverage:
My favorite thing is that she recommends, in lieu of her driveway, “they need to do it out in the mountains or somewhere.” Or, you know, when after they’ve landed at the airport.
Last year residents of a Pennsylvania town thought their homes were being TP’d from the sky with rolls of toilet paper falling from airplane lavatories. The FAA was.. skeptical.
However the FAA always stands ready to investigate:
If the person can tell us (the FAA) exactly when and where it happened, we can try to run radar replays to see if an aircraft flew overhead around that time. We don’t provide any advice on how to clean up blue ice
(HT: Alan H.)
I’ve lived just south of West Jordan, near the Fairfield VFR, for 40 years. I love watching the planes approach and turn over my house. In all those years I’ve never seen evidence of a plane dropping fecal matter. I’d guess that what she sees is not human but from the huge flocks of Starlings that have been swarming the past month. My kids love to see the mass of birds land in a field behind our house and then clap loudly to see and hear them fly off. Her car looks like the rest of the cars around after the Starlings fly over.
At least I’m not the only one. Also, someone is sneaking in my house and exchanging all the furniture with exact replicas without my permission or consent.
“I’m somewhat skeptical that these incidents really happen.”
@gary: When Austin Mueller was still open this happened to me driving down Lamar when i attended UT. Little “pieces of feces” fell on the windshield of my car, after a plane had just flown over on the approach to the East-West runway. It took me awhile to realize what it was.
So, I’m not skeptical of the claim.
There is no release lever for lav dumping while in flight, as the part of the process involves manually opening an access panel on the exterior of the aircraft. The only way this could happen is a system malfunction. I’ve heard of the systems leaking slowly, and the contents basically turning to ice and falling. But the likelihood of this happening at the same place more than once is pretty slim.
Poo? Are we writing to 4 year olds? The last time I was at the sewer department the correct term is “human waste” “sludge” or “fecal matter”.
@tomri: Why yes, yes we are.
@ Mike. Sorry about the exchange of your furniture. To be fair, we didn’t think we needed your permission since we were exchanging with exact replicas right down to the nicks and scratches. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about it anymore because we are sick of the fecal mater raining down or us as we go in and out of the tunnel. Very difficult to get that nasty stuff out of our pure white thobes. By the way, the ghost in the attic: it’s real!