Pilot Explains How She Plans Bathroom Breaks While She's On A Flight
Learning about the pilot perspective as a frequent flyer is fun!
Dean Drobot, Billion Photos / Canva Sarah Daniels is an actress, Twitch streamer, former Disney Princess, and now private pilot. After previously going viral for revealing the darker side of working at Disney Parks as a princess, she has recently gone viral once again for all of the interesting questions she’s been asked to answer, revealing all sorts of information about her time learning how to be a private pilot.
One of the more interesting questions she’s received was how Daniels plans bathroom breaks while she’s flying in the air — the short answer is that she doesn’t.
Sarah Daniels explained how a pilot handles their bathroom breaks.
Instead of planning her bathroom breaks, she only goes when she’s completely able to and uses a handy emergency tool called the Travel Jane — although it's worth noting she's a private pilot and not an airline transport pilot. “I don’t plan bathroom breaks,” she started before mimicking what someone else might say, asking her, “How do you do that, Sarah? You have a small bladder!”
They might know this because of her time spent streaming on Twitch, but she answered how this problem transfers into the air succinctly. “Well, I use a device called a Travel Jane and it slaps. I put the plane on autopilot because the Cirrus has an amazing autopilot and I use my Travel Jane.”
Once she finishes her business, she claims it’s as simple as sealing it up and putting it in the back of her plane.
She emphasized that this would only happen if there’s absolutely nothing going on in the air — there are no clouds, there’s no air traffic, the autopilot is functioning properly, and everything on the map looks good.
One time, while Daniels was in the air, she claimed that the Air Traffic Control radioed her to let her know that a plane would be flying close overhead. “I’m literally like, using the bathroom, and ATC’s like ‘123 Papa Charlie, there’s traffic at your 2:00. They’re far enough above you that it’s going to be no factor, but just keep an eye out.’”
Her response was a panicked confirmation that she was looking for traffic which she laughed off because of how silly the situation was.
It’s important to note that Daniels is a private pilot and her procedures may differ from an airline pilot, especially in a post-9/11 U.S. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as the Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) flight school, the path to becoming an Airline Transport Pilot starts with getting your private pilot license, followed by the commercial pilot license and then the ATP certificate.
Daniels revealed some other nuggets of information that come with being a pilot.
For instance, someone else asked what would happen if Daniels was up in the air and the weather changed unexpectedly.
As a somewhat frequent flyer, weather can play a pretty large role in whether or not your plane will arrive or depart on time. Sometimes there are massive delays or even cancellations, but what happens if your plane was cleared to fly and things changed while you were in the air?
Well, according to Daniels, the pilot is responsible for contacting a nearby Air Traffic Control tower and asking to divert the path of their plane.
Typically, this is extremely rare because before flying, there are charts and graphs and all sorts of meteorological data being calculated to figure out if it’s safe enough to fly. But when it does happen, the pilot will simply land the plane at a different airport until it’s safe enough to continue flying once more.
Another one of her videos is in response to a question someone asked about stalling on a plane. A little different than stalling in a car — which basically means that the engine gives out — stalling in a plane is when the plane is trying to level itself out to adjust for the speed it’s moving. If the nose of the plane is a little too high for the plane's speed to handle, it’ll simply dip on its own in order to readjust itself.
However, Daniels explained that if the engines for a plane were to go out, they would be trained to handle that as well. Whether it’s one engine gone or both engines gone, pilots are trained for hours upon hours to handle all possible situations.
These answers and bits of information are especially helpful because they give us a glimpse of what it’s like to be in the pilot’s shoes — especially evident in the way that Daniels talks about turbulence in another video.
No one enjoys turbulence, but it’s something that’s very common, and most people who have flown in planes have had to deal with it. In order to hopefully assuage some of the turbulence fears and anxieties, Daniels explained what it’s like from the pilot’s perspective.
“The pilots are never afraid. The pilots are never afraid of the bumps [because] guess what, they want to get home to their families too. They’re not taking that aircraft up if the weather’s not safe,” she said. “They have to check everything.”
According to AirAdvisor, flying and aviation continue to be one of the safest forms of transport known to man. In 2022, there were only 5 fatal accidents among 32.2 million flights — an incredibly small rate of 0.000016%.
These accidents are incredibly rare, so there’s nothing to worry about. As Daniels put it, you’re more likely to get into a car accident on the way to the airport than from the plane you’d be flying on.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.