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Delta Flight From New York to France Turns Back Halfway Due to Faulty Toilet

Darren Murph
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Darren Murph holds a Guinness World Record as the planet's most prolific professional blogger. He's an explorer at heart, having traversed nearly 50 countries and all 50 US states. He's flown over one million miles on Delta alone, and serves as a senior writer at TPG.
Aug. 15, 2018
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2 min read
Flight Path - DL412 JFK to NCE Diversion Path - August 14 2018
Delta Flight From New York to France Turns Back Halfway Due to Faulty Toilet
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Thanks to highly sophisticated tracking mechanisms (and things called clocks), we know that the last five Delta flights between New York-Kennedy (JFK) and Nice Côte d'Azur (NCE) each took around 7 hours and 20 minutes from takeoff to touchdown.

The one on August 14, 2018, however, took longer. And it never got to France.

An otherwise unassuming Tuesday night flight across the Atlantic got weird when passengers were informed that they would not, in fact, be landing in Europe. Instead, DL412 turned around roughly halfway, flying all the way back to New York. Total trip time? 7 hours and 36 minutes on a flight to nowhere. Ouch.

Making matters worse is the reported reason behind the diversion: an inoperable toilet. Famed host, author and producer Andy Cohen just so happened to be on the flight, and gave a comical — if not graphic — recap of what happened in an Instagram Story. He states that with just a few hours to go before reaching Europe, someone "pooped... or put something down the toilet," prompting the JFK-to-JFK circle. He did, however, acknowledge that he managed "a full night's sleep," which tells you that he almost certainly flew up front in Delta One on the 767 — registration N836MH.

Not exactly the route you'd hope to take to start your vacation in France...

Hilariously enough, TPG himself reviewed this exact same route in 2015, though it's safe to say the outcome was helped by having landed in France rather than New York.

Others on the flight took to Twitter to see if Delta had anything to add.

TPG reached out to Delta and received the following statement: "Delta apologizes to our customers for the inconvenience after Delta flight 412 to Nice, France returned to John F. Kennedy International Airport after the crew received an indication that the lavatories were inoperative. The flight landed without incident and the aircraft proceeded to the gate for maintenance inspection. Customers have been reaccommodated on an alternate flight and were offered a gesture of service recovery for the disruption to their travel."