SEPANG: Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH19, which made an unscheduled landing in India due to broken lavatories landed safely at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at 10.37am today.
An MAS spokesman said the plane was forced to make a U-turn twice in the Indian airspace before being allowed to land.
He said the action was taken due to the lack of aircraft parking bays at Chennai airport and as a normal procedure for plane to perform fuel dumping before landing.
"In the 7am (local time) incident, the aircraft had to land in India because of toilet malfunction.
"This is classified as unscheduled landing, not an emergency landing. The plane had to stop at Chennai Airport to get the lavatories fixed before proceeding to KLIA," he said when contacted today.
One of the passengers, Hilda Jakel from Amsterdam, said all passengers were calmed when the pilot announced that the plane had to make an unscheduled landing.
"At first, the pilots planned to land at Mumbai Airport but were instructed to land at Chennai Airport.
"We were told that all six lavatories were in good condition when the plane took off from Amsterdam. However, a few hours later, three of the lavatories were not functioning. Then, all lavatories were inoperable," she said, who was here for a holiday.
She said all passengers had to wait in the plane for an hour to allow the workers to fix the broken lavatories.
MH19 took off from Amsterdam at 12.08am local time and was scheduled to land at KLIA at 6.10am.
The total number of passengers onboard the MH19 flight is still uncertain at the moment.