Eyebrows were being raised even before the flight began in New Zealand as the tall young man and his two friends glugged duty-free whiskey from Burger King cups at the boarding gate. By the time I got on the Jetstar Airways flight on my way to Singapore, their bottle of Famous Grouse was half empty. Six hours later, when I next saw the bottle, a shocked-looking flight attendant was placing it into a locker; it was mostly empty.

We had just passed Australia and were heading over the Timor Sea. The cabin was quiet, people were dozing, and window shades were down. I heard the sound of running water, loud and close, but I didn’t spin around immediately, it sounded like someone’s drink bottle had tipped over. A young Hong Konger, Zhe Ma, reacted a little quicker—he was being urinated on.

“No, no, no! What the hell’s wrong with you?!” We all looked around at that point. The urinator was tall, and my eyes were at, say, “waist” level—it was a graphic view. He swayed back and forth as Zhe recoiled back as far as he could.

As a shocked chorus of shouts started to build, I grabbed hold of the urinator’s T-shirt. He was peeing a long, healthy stream of urine, and it looked like it might go on for a while. With my hand on his shirt, I started to realize what a delicate little crisis it was—if I started grappling with the guy there’d be a lot of collateral damage. Most of the pee was being directed at the carpet, so I would only make things worse by wobbling the guy around, it would be like wrestling with a sprinkler.

At first, he was fending off the shouts and smacks with a drawled “hey, hey, hey,” as if to say “come on now, I’m trying to have a pee here, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

After a few more seconds, faced with a cluster of people shouting at him to stop, he seemed to become dimly aware that he might be being uncouth. He pulled up his shorts and started staggering back down toward the other end of the plane. I stood up and ducked my head in through the curtain of the service area. A flight attendant was filling a service tray. I told her what had just happened.

“He what?”

“Pissed in the aisle.”

“What?”

“Peed, he peed in the aisle and on a passenger.”

“I’m sorry, but he what?”

“He urinated, he urinated, just back here, look.”

When the meaning finally sunk in, she looked like a cornered animal. She disappeared in the opposite direction.

When you pay $500 for a flight to Singapore, you’re not expecting white-glove service, but it was pretty heartbreaking to see Zhe having to make a big show of the fact that he had been peed on. The Jetstar crew talked urgently in a little huddle while Zhe was left to stand alone wiping himself down with paper towels.

Eventually the captain arrived and stood discussing things with the crew.

Zhe was given another seat and left us with a poignant “it’s just not my day.”

The urine was never cleaned up.

Half an hour after the incident, Jessica Kay, seated behind me, asked one of the flight crew if she might please provide a plastic bag for her splashed scarf. But this flight attendant (or as we call them in New Zealand, “air hostess”) surprisingly hadn’t heard about the incident at all. Another embarrassed communication took place as Jessica clarified the meaning of “peed.” Later in the flight I watched another delicate young air hostess trail the strap of her apron through piss-soaked carpet as she crouched to dig a Coke can from a service tray.

After we arrived, I lingered in my seat to take a photograph of the guy being detained. I didn’t much like the thought of a fellow New Zealander being dragged off to some grim holding pen by humorless Singaporean police, so I wanted to watch how he was handled. The guy simply strolled off the plane, receiving the usual little bows and “thank yous” from the crew.

As we walked into the terminal, I asked him what all “that” had been about. He said he had no idea what I was talking about. When I told him about his mid-flight public bathroom break, he stopped walking and slapped a hand to his forehead.

“Nooooo!”

Then, turning to his two friends, “what the f---, you guys are s’posed to have my back!”

Something else dawned on him. “Oh my god, the Subway!" he said about his sandwich. "That’s why it was all wet!! And I ate it!!

Free, and sober, the trio walked off into the terminal. The urinator’s voice was croaky as he headed for immigration.

“This is going to be the best holiday ever.”

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Amos Chapple is a freelance photographer based in Aukland, New Zealand. His work can be see at www.amoschapple.com.