Wednesday afternoon’s United Airlines flight 557 from Charleston to Denver left about half an hour late. During the flight, a lavatory toilet started spewing water, according to a passenger on board. It came from one of the lavatories by the rear galley of the Boeing 737 MAX 8.
The passenger notes,
I was in one of the back row with my laptop in computer watching something when I realized my bag was wet with toilet water under the seat ruined my bag and a $1200 laptop.
@united needs to reimburse me for toilet water exploding on my bag under my seat pic.twitter.com/kMGi41M8K5
— Baptize Machine Podcast (@BaptizeThe) October 10, 2024
This wasn’t just an episode of “what’s grosser than gross” it was a serious inconvenience and not the experience the customer purchased. At some level, surely the passenger ought to be refunded for their ticket at the very least, right? Instead, the airline offered compensation of… 5,000 MileagePlus miles.
@united offered 5000 miles for breaking my $1200 laptop in a toilet flood have not even gotten miles pic.twitter.com/Kj9cZhFcxf
— Baptize Machine Podcast (@BaptizeThe) October 10, 2024
To pursue additional compensation,
- Respond to the customer service note offering the de minimis miles. Often to get a real person’s attention you need to get past the first line customer service, which provides a generic answer off the shelf and probably didn’t really account for the specifics of the situation – just looked for a ‘best match’ from answer templates.
- Did you know that some credit card baggage insurance even covers carry-on bags? We usually think of it for checked bags, but the stuff you bring on the plane can be covered too.
For instance here are links to American Express card coverage details. Computers are considered ‘high risk’ items where the coverage cap is generally going to be $1,000 (rather than $2,000).
In this case it seems like a claim would be worthwhile, if the ticket were purchased with a card that has lost and damaged bag insurance.
- Consider a DOT consumer complaint to at least escalate the issue to where a real person needs to read it.
United does seem to be at fault here, and they should surely do more for affected customers. The plane overnighted in Denver. Hopefully passengers don’t continue to experience similar issues.
@ Gary — Sounds like a lawsuit to me. I would certianly pursue legal action.
5,000 miles doesn’t even seem like the equivalent of $1,200 in tickets.
Why didn’t he pick up the laptop bag from the floor ? His feet sensed water , no ?
Why didn’t he purchase insurance before the flight ?
Hotel maid might have dropped it on the floor ? He could have dropped it onto cement ?
If passenger was watching a movie on his laptop, then how was the laptop ruined? Even if the laptop was in the bag, it would have to be fully submerged to be unrecoverable, not just a little water on the surface. I smell insurance fraud and/or lying to try to get more compensation…or maybe just another typical social media drama queen.
This seems like a situation for small claims court. I hope that a lot of photos were taken to document the situation. Subpoena people and documents as needed for your case. Figuring out the value of the laptop and the carrying bag along with any other thing that was damaged needs to be established. Things on it such as personal photos and digital gift cards are much harder to document and assign value. Any physical item will probably be prorated down for the number of years and months it was owned. If you bought the items online it might be easier to find your receipt compared to purchasing them in a physical store with a paper receipt. Don’t settle for miles, even for 100,000+ of them if you are not going to use them to get an equivalent dollar amount to what you lost. It is better to get dollars. Even if the laptop was ruined, it is possible that the hard drive (solid state or not) is still good and what is on it can be recovered. The possibility of flooding is a good reason to keep any such electronic items in the overhead bins if possible or even in the seat back pockets. The flight attendants should have notified everyone who could be affected as soon as water started coming out of the lavatory.
And people wonder why some of us refuse to put “personal items” on the floor? Yet another reason I will continue to use the overhead bin (not that I’m sitting anywhere near a lav)
Can’t he bring an action in small claims court for the replacement cost of the computer?
Airplane floors are disgusting and I avoid placing anything other than my covered feet on the floor. Yet FAs constantly admonish passengers to stow items on the floor. Terrible!
Lucky it wasnt the old style Lavs Blue Juice!!
Maybe it was time to upgrade to Windows 11
Eh, most likely sink water. Pretty much every modern jetliner now uses vacuum toilets where the waste tank is well in the back below the cabin and overflows are pretty much impossible unless the bowl managed to clog and the flush mechanism simultaneously got into an endless loop of spritzing water somehow.
I avoid putting any of my belongings on the plane floors other than my shoes. And if I have to put anything else on the floor, out comes my giant plastic bag to keep my under-seat bag from making contact with the plane floors.
@Raphael: 5,000 MileagePlus miles is worth $100 at best. Not even close to a fair reimbursement. That said, I think the initial offer was basically an AI default, as Gary implied.
There’s a lot of hate trying to hold United responsible. Just once I would love to hold the passengers responsible for clogging or damaging the lavatory. A lot of delays in the cabin is a direct result of passengers destroying, misusing and not knowing how to operate the equipment. This passenger’s laptop did get wet but still worked with no damage. This is just the case of a passenger trying to add frequent flyer miles. And for the author just to blame United right out, it’s just wrong. The passenger said he was watching a movie how is his laptop on the floor?
All you people talking about suing and taking to small claims court and then you’ll complain about high airfares. SMH
Agree with Doug 100%. Plus why was this passenger watching a movie on his laptop on the floor of the plane? Cause that’s the only way I see that it would get wet!
I’m sure he was watching a movie on the airolane seat screen, not his laptop on rhe floor getting wet.
It’s usually $50 cost per 1000 miles.
I used small claims court to get fair compensation after being laid off. The company and I disagreed on how much I was owed, with them offering less than what I calculated. The night court judge (I think it was a court commissioner) weighed the arguments and came up with a number between our two positions. I doubt that small claims court actions against an airline would add up to very much of that airline’s bottom line and would thus not make very much of a difference in ticket price. I have never heard an airline cite small claims court costs as a reason to raise ticket prices.
As for the laptop working after getting wet, I couldn’t find information about that. A link to an open reference would be helpful (not one with a paywall or having to sign up). A movie could be watched on a smart phone or a separate tablet or on inflight entertainment. There is no reference to a movie being watched at the time of the water on the floor, on the laptop that got wet. “I was in one of the back row with my laptop in computer watching something when I realized my bag was wet with toilet water under the seat ruined my bag and a $1200 laptop.” Since the sentence is garbled, I take it to mean that the laptop was in the computer bag. This information would be discussed in small claims court and the exact situation would be determined.