American Airlines Aspen Flight Cancels After Passenger Gets Stuck in the Lavatory

American Airlines cancelled its SkyWest CRJ-700 regional jet flight AA3018 from Chicago to Aspen after a passenger locked herself in the lavatory.

The event unfolded in dramatic fashion as the passenger was eventually rescued, issues with the plane required an aircraft swap and a several hours delay before the flight was eventually scrubbed.

Kent Lassman live tweeted the lavatory incident.

A passenger tried to break in with a credit card. Credit cards have all sorts of uses, from trip delay coverage to stopping bullets during assassination attempts.

It didn’t work. Another passenger took over trying to rescue the woman. Things became tense as passengers realized they loaded up on water in the terminal after giving up their liquids at the TSA checkpoint.

After returning the gate ground crew came on board to try to attempt a rescue. He had to leave to get a special tool. Passengers were all deplaned.

American’s twitter team refuses to reveal details of the tool used to extract the passenger from the lav.

They freed the woman but the aircraft was taken out of service. Apparently additional maintenance was required.

A new plane was assigned to the flight and everyone headed over to a new gate. Fear of a repeat event grips our correspondent as he passes a ‘Chili’s Too’ while traveling down the terminal. Or what if American decides to offer complimentary drinks to passengers affected by the delay?

Despite getting another aircraft eventually the flight cancelled. Our reporter-on-the-scene is flown back home from Chicago O’Hare to Washington DC to start a new journey to Denver where it sounds like he’d fly United with no connecting segment to Aspen.

(HT: Dan R.)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. How does the size of the bathroom for the ORD-ASE flight compare to what AA has on the most cramped of its mainline fleet?

  2. the 4:30pm tweet is easily explained… clearly a different airplane. The ERJ-145 is not certified to fly in/out of ASE in revenue operations

  3. Entertaining story. … there’s a chance it could be the closing story on a network news broadcast. We will just have to wait and see!

  4. Are you sure it wasn’t a toilet on the new 737-MAX that the poor lady got stuck in??

  5. Could you imagine getting stuck in a bathroom on a long haul flight? It would be a disaster. I’m sure they would have to divert.

  6. It should have been a 737-MAX and the one locked in should have been Doug Parker.
    Only then will he rethink his march to destroy AA’s brand.

  7. Reporting is incomplete Did the toilet gal join the rescheduled flight, or was she reseated onto another plane?

  8. This is an old post, but what is the follow up for this? If the door gets jammed during a flight, can a crew member dismantle it using tools stored on the aircraft? In a typical restroom, worst case scenario, you have to crawl under the partition. 2nd worst case, the door doesn’t stay closed. On an airplane, a folding door that is susceptible to jamming should be easily and quickly removable. Any other design is not airworthy.

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