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Potty Break Denied
The Travel Critic · January 14, 2000

All Deana Pollard wanted was to go to the bathroom. All the Southwest Airlines crew members wanted was for her to return to her seat as their flight from Seattle to Los Angeles taxied down the runway.

Now the two sides are locked in a nasty legal brawl over the disputed potty break, airline rules and a bad sense of humor.

The carrier alleges Pollard disobeyed the instructions of its flight crew, prompting the crew to turn the plane around to have her arrested. Pollard says her medical condition made a bathroom visit necessary and that the attendants subjected her to ridicule when they learned of her predicament.

One thing seems certain: Southwest picked the wrong passenger to mess with. Not only did Pollard graduate at the top of her class at the University of Southern California's law school, but she's a practicing attorney specializing in, of all things, civil rights cases.

"I had a baby about a year ago," says Pollard, who lives in Redondo Beach, Calif.. "I was still having a problem with incontinence - if I coughed real hard, sneezed real hard or laughed real hard, I urinated. We were in line to take off, and I had to go to the bathroom badly."

When Pollard climbed out of her seat, she says the reaction from the crew was swift and callous. The flight attendants barked at her to "sit down" and then, when she told them of her medical condition, the women giggled at her quandary. "They were both laughing, and it was a mean-spirited, nasty laugh. I was on the verge of wetting my pants," she adds.

Guess what happened next? After being released in Seattle, and following a few months of futile back-and-forth correspondence with the airline, Pollard took the matter to court. She's suing Southwest for slander, false imprisonment, defamation, assault, breach of contract and the cost of a new flight, among other things. The trial is set to start in March.

Southwest, for its part, isn't saying much. "We are vigorously defending against her claim," says Linda Rutherford, a spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines. "We don't like to play out a lawsuit in the media. We like to play it out in the courtroom."

You'd think Pollard's claim would be a one-off. Wrong.

The other day I received an e-mail from a traveler who will remain nameless for reasons that will soon be obvious. He and his pregnant wife were flying from New Jersey to Arizona when they got into a similar situation as Pollard. The aircraft was waiting to take off and the flight attendants wouldn't let her use the WC.

"My wife made a few desperate attempts down the aisle but was promptly returned to her seat by the unsympathetic flight attendants," he says. "When the seat belt sign came off, my wife, along with about 20 other desperados, made a beeline for the two lavatories in back, which my wife was about 10th on."

The passenger checked on his spouse a few minutes later and realized she was in bad shape. "She tried to say through her gritted teeth that she couldn't hold it any longer. And then my wife, a grown, 32-year-old woman with two Ivy League degrees, wet herself right there in the aisle."

Jeff Zack, a spokesman for the Association of Flight Attendants, says passengers bolt out of their seats during the critical takeoff and landing phases - when the FAA mandates that everyone must be seated - "very frequently."

Flight attendants are required either to return the passenger to the seat or to inform the pilot that the cabin isn't ready. "People don't know that it's the law, that they have to sit down," he says. "Even during the flight, when the seat-belt sign is left on but you're allowed to move about the cabin, there's still a danger of clear air turbulence. That light is on for everyone's safety. The crew isn't trying to keep passengers in their seats out of any mean-spiritedness."

But should there be exceptions for travelers who need to use the bathroom in an emergency? I'll never forget the case of a German passenger leaving Miami who had to use the toilet so badly that he blurted his request to a flight attendant as "This plane is going to explode" - an unfortunate translation of a German phrase that means, "I've gotta go really bad." The plane made a U-turn and was relieved of the offending passenger.

I think allowances should be made for incontinent travelers only if safety isn't compromised. Either way, crew members shouldn't be mocking passengers - ever. In the Southwest case, it certainly appears as if the flight attendants thought they could get away with having a laugh at the customer's expense, which is a behavior the airline's corporate culture tolerates, if not tacitly encourages.

We can probably do without the potty humor, thanks very much.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.