We Almost Took Off With a Pax in the Lav
I'm on a SkyWest CRJ-900 at OAK bound for LAX. We push back around scheduled departure time, but are given a ground hold of about 25 minutes by LAX flight control. About 20 minutes into the hold a large man comes from the back and asks to use the F cabin lav; the FA tells him to go back to his seat. A couple of minutes later, the man comes back and plows through the folding doors and into the lav. About 10 seconds later, our turn comes to take runway 30 and take off. The pilot starts to move the CRJ-900 into position, and then all of a sudden slams on the brakes, having been just alerted by the forward FA that there is a man in the john.
The net result is that we were delayed an additional 10 minutes as we then had to wait for two incoming Southwest jets to land before we could get onto runway 30.
Fortunately, I made my connection at LAX. Barely.