This Is What Airplane Toilets Do With Your Waste

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00:00On a typical long-haul flight, you are served two meals,

00:12which you wash down with your choice of beer, wine, or water.

00:19And that leads to over 1,000 flushes of the airplane toilets.

00:22So where does all that waste go?

00:30Old airline toilet systems relied on large quantities

00:34of blue sanitation fluid.

00:38Unfortunately, the systems often leet,

00:41forming a frigid ball of blue ice and frozen feces.

00:49These days, the nasty stuff all stays on board.

00:52And it's all thanks to this design classic, the vacuum toilet.

00:58This system eliminates the need for large quantities

01:02of blue fluid and instead relies on strong suction and slick walls.

01:07The bowl is coated with non-stick Teflon, like your frying pan.

01:17When the flush button is pressed, a valve opens, sucking down

01:21the contents of the bowl.

01:26The load, smell and all, accelerates faster than a Formula One car.

01:35In seconds, the pipes carry the contents into large tanks

01:38at the rear of the plane.

01:40And once a plane has touched down, it needs to empty its bowels.

01:49You might think this is trivial, but it can't take off for its next flight

01:53until the human waste is removed.

01:55Enter the honey truck, a pretty name for a vehicle with a pretty filthy job.

02:08It's one of the first vehicles to reach the plane at the gate.

02:14This Schrader TSU-3 sewage truck has an 800-gallon stainless steel waste tank.

02:20A powerful vacuum pump can fill that tank in just 10 minutes.

02:29But the honey truck still relies on its driver to connect it to the aircraft by hand.

02:35This is Lothar Malley.

02:37Today, he has to empty over 230 gallons of waste from a jumbo jet's two tanks.

02:47The aircraft needs to stay on schedule, so Lothar has to work fast.

02:53He carefully connects the waste pipe to the plane's release valve, making sure it's locked in place.

03:01When it's not locked, it goes like this.

03:05It falls off, falls off, and then everything comes here, on this, on the floor.

03:10Having avoided an unpleasant shower, Lothar connects a flush pipe to clean out the plane's

03:18tanks with water and disinfectant.

03:20With the waste tanks drained, Lothar drives to the disposal facility.

03:36He parks over the sewer pipe, opens a valve, and lets gravity do the rest.

03:45It's a nice job, but the smell, it's not so nice.

03:49I can't wait to see light.

03:50I'm going.

03:51I can't wait to see light.

03:53Can you see a good day or anything?

03:54To get out of the air.

03:55Can you see a new thing?

03:56Yeah.

03:57I'm going.

03:58Can you see it again?

03:59Bye.

04:01I can't wait.

04:02I'm going.

04:03You know, I'm going.

04:05I'm going.

04:06Bye.

04:06I'm going.

04:08Bye.

04:09Bye.

04:10Bye.

04:11Bye.

04:12Bye.

04:14Bye.

04:15Bye.

04:16Bye.

04:17Bye.

04:18Bye.

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