Why airplanes have smaller toilets these days
12/08/10 11:13 Filed in: Personal
You know, a lot of people have emailed to ask “Robert, why does it seem like airplane toilets have got smaller?”.
OK, admittedly ZERO people have. But if they did, I do have an answer for them.
I have this with authority from a senior engineer of a major airline. As you can tell, that person wants to remain anonymous.
Since the increase in passenger traffic over the last 15 years the number of seats on planes has increased. Same flights only more passengers.
But the downside for the airlines is that they are required to provide on-flight facilities for the increased number of passengers. Now they weren’t going to send their existing fleet of planes back to Boeing or Airbus in order to have additional vacuum piping fitted for the required extra toilets.
So the simpler solution was to use the existing space and pipework and simply convert two toilet spaces into three.
Yes, you read that correctly, toilets are effectively
OK, admittedly ZERO people have. But if they did, I do have an answer for them.
I have this with authority from a senior engineer of a major airline. As you can tell, that person wants to remain anonymous.
Since the increase in passenger traffic over the last 15 years the number of seats on planes has increased. Same flights only more passengers.
But the downside for the airlines is that they are required to provide on-flight facilities for the increased number of passengers. Now they weren’t going to send their existing fleet of planes back to Boeing or Airbus in order to have additional vacuum piping fitted for the required extra toilets.
So the simpler solution was to use the existing space and pipework and simply convert two toilet spaces into three.
Yes, you read that correctly, toilets are effectively