Aeroplane toilets

[Somebody17]

Do they have sewers on planes?

[gary baldy]

I was trying to think of a sarcastic and smartass answer to this but couldnt think of one.

Yes - planes do have sewers. Have you never seen those big pipes that criss cross the sky and the little pipes that planes drag round behind them?
Have you never been held up in a plane jam when they have to dig one of the sky sewers up?

[shaneystar2]

Do you mean people who do needlework on long haul flights..
cross stitch ..that sort of thing? :))

[NORMANTHEDOG]

been on the LSD mate

[ENGINEER1973]

Did you ever see billy connolys way of how the waste is dumped? LOL

[~Vulpine~]

They freeze it on board, then drop it over the mountains or on some unsuspecting person's head - you hear about it sometimes, people being hit by 'a lump of frozen urine'!

Ah, I know it's not really that funny, but it soooooo makes me laugh...

[heathfield]

Sensible answer... In effect, they do. But the problem is that they can't use gravity to get the waste from the toilets to the sewage tank - if they did, when the plane hit turbulence, the waste could all end up back in the toilets!
Instead they use a suction pipe. A vacuum is created in the sewage tank, and when you press the flush handle, a valve in the base of the toilet bowl opens, and the waste is sucked through a pipe into the tank.
Modern ships and oil rigs use this method too, since there's less chance of a blockage in the pipe due to the force of the suction.

[rccatnap]

I used to be cabin crew on long haul flights and aircraft toilets were often the bane of our and the passengers' lives. Pre 747s (1972 and earlier) most planes had a chemical toilet and each of them had to be emptied and refilled at the airport. I remember one of our passengers came out of the lavatory on a VC10 in flight and told the chief steward that he was convinced his passport had fallen out of his back pocket into the pan. The resourceful chief got hold of a plastic bag and put the bag over his hand and arm. He managed to fish the passport out, shook it carefully and pulled the bag inside out with the passport inside it. he then calmly gave it to the passenger who was a bit stunned, to say the least. "What do I do with this now?" he said.
"Whatever you wish sir, just thank God you're not an immigration official." was the reply.
747s were the first aircraft I saw that borrowed the vacuum principle from the ships. Having only one tank, or certainly fewer, to empty was much cheaper. However, they were prone to blockages if anyone put something really solid down the pan, like an empty coke can. If there was still some vacuum discerable we threw a few ice cubes down and they often cleared the obstruction.

[quiksurfer]

Im a ground services agent at the airport and the toilet waste does go in to a tank which is sucked out at the end of most flights. The ice people are talking about is called blue ice which you only get if the toilet has a leak. You quite often see blue lines down the side of a plane where there has been a leak from the behind the tank panel. Sometimes stil frozen depending on the weather.