Tag Archives for lavatory.
Here’s what federal aviation regulations tell us about a pilot who doesn’t go back into the cockpit right away after taking a bathroom break – deciding to flirt with a flight attendant in the galley instead.
The sixth edition of CAAC’s Technical Guidelines for Prevention and Control of Epidemics in Transport Airlines and Airports lays out the country’s plan to avoid spreading infection while managing inbound international traffic. Domestic travel has largely recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but strict limits are placed on international travel to avoid importing SARS-CoV-2 back into the country.
Wearing diapers and avoiding the lavatory are just one of many strategies – including masks, gloves, goggles, hair nets, and hazmat suits – that are recommended for crew on flights bringing people back from places where the virus is spreading. Planes have quarantine sections of the aircraft cordoned off for anyone who shoes symptoms of infection, in order to separate them from other passengers and crew.
Airline lavatories are usually pretty simple. To be sure some passengers fail to use them, sometimes they’re inoperative and sometimes other passengers stink them up, but for the most part they work the same way. The only thing that confuses passengers is which one are they allowed to use?
This long-controversial question has been settled on United Airlines: to reduce bunching of passengers waiting in line for the loo, they may now use any lavatory on the plane. This is a coronavirus distancing measure.
While U.S. airlines are going to great length to clean their aircraft, lavatories are shared spaces that don’t get cleaned during the flight. One airline though is going to begin sanitizing their lavatories every 45 minutes – something that’s crucial on a long haul flight.
One of Ryanair’s new guidelines is no queuing for the lavatory. In the front of the plane post-9/11 security measures have usually included this guidance, though people frequently do line up in the back.
What’s new at Ryanair is that passengers will have to ask permission to use the toilet before getting up. Apparently it’s perfectly safe to sit beside someone in your seat, and dangerous to do so near the loo.
An Aer Lingus passenger is suing because she says flight attendants yanked out of the lavatory as the plane prepared to go into its takeoff roll.
The passenger says she was “dragged back to her seat while her pants were still below her knees, exposing her buttocks and genitalia to other passengers.”
Stealing inches out of the lavatory helps airlines cram another row of seats into the plane. The new smaller lavatories some airlines have been using on narrowbody aircraft have been called “the most miserable experience in the world.”
But what if there was a lavatory that was easier to get into and that was even expandable?
United’s Boeing 787-8 and 787-9 fleet – the latter which flies United’s longest flights to places like Sydney, Singapore, and Capetown – have still had the old Diamond 2-2-2 seats that most passengers with a choice avoid.
We finally have a look into United’s retrofit plans for these aircraft, and it isn’t pretty.
You’re supposed to be at your seat for takeoff and landing of course, and there’s no seat belt in the lavatory. However on Wednesday’s United Airlines UA1554 non-stop from Washington National to San Francisco, the flight had to divert to Denver when a passenger got stuck in the lavatory.
The passenger had to sit on the throne for landing, and United mechanics were sent in for a rescue.
Whenever Ryanair is out of the news their CEO Michael O’Leary talks about making passengers stand (to cram more people onto planes) and making them pay to use the lavatory. In the U.S. pay toilets are illegal in many states but those prohibitions wouldn’t apply to airlines since they’d be pre-empted by the federal Airline Deregulation Act.
UK pay toilets are often cleaner than free ones. Would airlines charging for lavatories give us better lavatories? Would they give us bigger lavatories since they’d become a profit center?
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
