MH19 makes emergency landing over restroom mess

CHENNAI: A Malaysian Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, with 230 passengers on board, made an unscheduled landing at Chennai airport early this morning due to a restroom issue.

“The restrooms became inoperable and it became the priority for the airline crew to make it usable. Their request to land in Mumbai was not accepted by ATC there and so the crew reached Chennai to clean up the mess. They wanted to make the restrooms functional by morning,” airport sources said. The flight landed around 2.30 am and took off by 4.30 am.

Malaysian Airlines said the unscheduled landing on Thursday was due to broken lavatories. MH19, while flying the same route as flight MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine last year, developed lavatory problem and had to land in India. The airlines renamed the flight code to MH19 after the MH17 tragedy.