emcampbe

I'd guess this too (though I'm not sure if working lavs would be the reason - not sure they are required - I thought they were not, and I'm pretty sure I had a [short, proabably ~1 hour] flight once where they announced the lav wasn't working, encouraging people to use the facilities at the airport if they needed first). What I'm a little more surprised about is why they would fly with the original flight number - you'd think they'd cancel the flight in the system - then fly the plane with a different flight number (ie, don't they have flight numbers set aside for ferries like this, I think it used to be 21XX or 25XX something, but I could be wrong). I don't know what additional logistics go into that, in terms of flight planning or whatnot, but you'd think canceling the flight would also make it easier for the pax to get rebooked.

On another note, I remember one time several years ago getting on a UAX short hop (probably CVG-ORD), and at boarding, figuring out my tray table latch wasn't working properly at boarding - it was loose or something and the tray table was unlatching occasionally and without me touching it. I was trying to make a connection somewhere of relative importance, and I think it was already delayed, and didn't want to affect the other 70 people (or whatever) on board. Rather then alert the FA right away and have something like this happen (or more likely, a call to maintenance with an additional not minor further delay), I held it up myself to make sure it wouldn't unlatch until after take off, then alerted the flight attendant when we were in the air so it could be fixed on the ground.