A Qantas Airline plane was forced to return to Los Angeles on Tuesday after a burst water pipe doused passengers.
The Melbourne-bound Airbus A380 flew for an hour before water began gushing out of the plane's water supply pipes and onto 80 passengers seated in the fuselage's upper deck business class section, according to Seven News. The pilot subsequently brought the aircraft back to Los Angeles as a pre-caution. Engineers are looking into the leak to determine if the plane is usable for future flights to Melbourne. Qantas may have to use another plane all-together.
"Crew on board did everything they could to help customers, including moving them to unaffected areas and providing spare blankets so they could stay dry," affirmed company officials.
"We're also providing customers with hotel accommodation while the issue is being fixed by our engineers in Los Angeles," the company added. "We apologize to customers for the inconvenience. There were no safety of flight concerns with the water leak, however the Captain decided to return to LA in the interests of passenger comfort. We are liaising with Airbus to understand what caused this fault."
"It wasn't a safety issue, it was just passenger discomfort," chimed another Qantas spokeswoman. ''It was an inconvenience for passengers. Crew did everything they could by moving passengers to unaffected areas and giving them extra blankets.''
''It's just like the weather, there's no point worrying about it because you can't do anything about it,'' stated one passenger from Fairfax Media.
"Pipe burst on my #Qantas flight over the Pacific," tweeted "Community" actress Yvette Nicole Brown as the incident happened. "We were diverted back to LA. River running thru the aisles #ScaryTimes #WillKeepYouPosted."
A faulty fuel pump forced another Los Angeles-Melbourne flight back to the gate in April, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
