photo Credit, Getty Images
The British often worried about the weather, but a man from Berkshire, west of London, had specific reasons to worry about the skies above him.
He was resting in his garden when he was “splashed in a very unpleasant way” with human waste dropped from a plane. The incident took place in mid-July, but was not disclosed on the occasion of the ‘city council meeting’.
Speaking to the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Aviation Forum, councilor Karen Davies said she had been approached by a voter and was “horrified” to learn of the “horrific” incident.
She explained how “her entire garden, her umbrellas and herself were covered with excrement”.
So how did this happen, and do we all have to look at the sky?
What happened ?
photo Credit, Getty Images
Planes landing at Heathrow regularly take off over Windsor.
The man lives in Windsor, a city famous for its palace belonging to the Queen, but also on the runway for Heathrow, the largest of the five airports serving London.
“I know there are many incidents every year with frozen sewage from airplanes, but it wasn’t frozen and her whole garden was kind of scattered. Very unbearable,” said Ms. Davis.
“He was in the garden at the time, so a really terrifying, terrifying experience. Hopefully it never happens again for any of our residents,” she said.
Another advisor, John Bowden, called it “a chance in a billion”.
He suggested that warmer weather meant that feces “may come out as more of a ‘liquid’ element.”
Aircraft toilets store human waste in special tanks, which are usually emptied after the plane has landed.
But international aviation authorities agree that toilets may leak into the air.
BBC Radio Berkshire spoke to aviation expert Julian Bray to find out how this kind of rain could happen.
“Modern aircraft have vacuum toilets so they are very secure and very well sealed. The problem is the vacuum junction between the toilet mechanism and the storage tank,” Bray said.
“But there can never be a 100% tight seal, because it has to have little flexibility as the plane goes through different pressure levels.”
“Looks like what happened here is that when the plane is landing, it comes to about 6,000 feet (1,800 m), and the pressure changes. There’s a leak and, unfortunately, the man in this garden – his two umbrellas Not to mention — covered with this substance.”
But how common is this?
photo Credit, Getty Images
Fragments of frozen human waste that escape from airplanes mid-flight are called “blue ice” because of the disinfectant used by airlines.
“Fortunately, this is a very rare event. It must have happened a lot in the past and this will lead to a thing called blue ice,” said Mr. Bray.
It’s called blue ice, rather than any other color, because it’s a mixture of urine and disinfectant, he explained.
“It used to be – not very regularly, but it actually happened. It was falling as snowflakes. It was not very pleasant,” he said.
One man who actually saw blue ice cream fall – Paul d’Ivoire – described his experience to BBC Radio Berkshire.
“I was coming out of Princess Margaret Hospital and an Air Canada jet passed at a very low altitude, of course, approaching Heathrow,” Paul says, “and the toilet ice fell off the train. The plane landed and cut two or three branches of a pine tree about 3.6 meters in front of me.”
Paul considers himself lucky to be alive, and believes that his compatriots from Berkshire should consider themselves lucky as well.
“I think the man who got the smell on it was very lucky, because if it was blue ice it would have killed it,” he said.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority told the BBC in 2016 that around 25 “blue ice” falls are reported each year among the 2.5 million annual flights over UK airspace, but it certainly occurs everywhere.
international events
Those who have said they have seen the aftermath of an involuntary ejection from a plane are helpless from the US state of Pennsylvania.
Joe Cambre of Lewistown told a local television station that his stepdaughter’s 16-year-old birthday party was ruined when “something bad happened in the congregation.”
Luckily, the awning he put up for the party saved most of the guests from this real spoiler.
A ball of ice cream that fell on a village in the northern Indian state of Haryana in January 2018 is also believed to be frozen human waste from a plane.
10-12 kg snowflake fell on Fazilpur Badli village with “loud thunder”.
photo Credit, Gurgaon Police
A snowflake of 10 to 12 kg fell on the village of Fazilpur Badli in northern India.
A senior local official told the BBC that some villagers believed it was a “foreign” object. “I heard they took the samples home,” he said.
The Times of India reported that in December 2015, a 60-year-old woman was actually hit by an alleged block of blue ice the size of a soccer ball.
In India, as in many other countries around the world, it is considered good luck when a bird preys on you, but as the hapless Indian found out, there is nothing lucky about being struck by the fall of other types of droppings. Not there.
She suffered a serious shoulder injury, but eyewitnesses say she avoided being killed because the snowball had crashed before hitting the roof of a house.
spread risk
Mr Bray has good news for our Windsor victim, but it’s likely that many more of us will be looking up to the skies in panic.
Aviation authorities are changing the way planes reach airports.
“They’re going to install what they call the funnel system. Right now it’s a linear system and all the planes follow each other,” Bray explains.
“Imagine a funnel in the sky – they’ll take whatever planes they want into that funnel, so the planes will be more spread out.”
According to Bray, since aircraft do not follow a very tight route, the risk is spread more widely, “meaning that people around existing airports can expect a reduction in these incidents.
But others living further away from airports could be brought into the danger zone.
In that case, Bray says the person from Windsor should definitely apply for reinstatement.
The name of the airline has not been released to the BBC. However, Ms Davis said the resident contacted the airline, which denied that her plane was in the area, but later confirmed this after the resident was able to identify the plane via an app.
we had to take things in hand
Resident Andrew Hall, who was present at the virtual council meeting, said it would be right to demand adequate compensation to the unfortunate person.
“Water companies are fined millions for pouring sewage into rivers,” he said, and “when a plane splashes it over people’s heads, I think it’s ‘more heinous, frankly’.”
photo Credit, Getty Images
Planes usually follow each other to land in line at this time. Here, an airplane passes through turbulence caused by the front.
But Ms Davis said the resident decided not to file a complaint with her insurance.
“Obviously he wasn’t going to do that for some garden umbrellas, which would have increased his premium, so he had to take matters into his own hands,” she said.
The BBC contacted the UK Civil Aviation Authority for a response, but did not receive a response after several days.
Another source reluctant to discuss this unfortunate matter is the man at the center of this latest fecal storm.
Despite the great interest of British newspapers in his story, he has so far refused to discuss the details.
The British inclination to discuss what is falling from the sky seems to have its limits.
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