“We are reaching out to all customers onboard and the customer in the lavatory to apologise,” read a bizarre United Airlines statement after one of its flights had to be diverted after a passenger got stuck in the toilet.

Flight 1554 from Washington, DC was originally scheduled to arrive in San Francisco at 8:38 pm on Wednesday night.

However, after the “lavatory door became inoperative”, trapping a female passenger inside, the flight was diverted and maintenance crew called in to extricate the anxious passenger.

The passengers were then moved to a new aircraft, which continued to their original destination.