Source: New York Times
Author: Christopher Elliott

A Necessity Airlines Shouldn't Take for Granted By

NEXT time you board a plane, consider visiting the restroom first.

The passengers on a recent United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Sydney probably wish they had. For reasons that are still a little murky, the toilets on the Boeing 747 began to clog up about halfway through the 14-hour flight. By the time the plane landed, only 2 of 15 lavatories were working.

What is noteworthy about the plumbing problem isn't so much that it happened - although an almost complete failure of an aircraft's restroom facilities remains rare - but that flying many aircraft with nonworking lavatories is completely legal.

What exactly does the law say about airborne restrooms? Aside from the Air Carrier Access Act, not much.

Unbelievable as it may sound, the only apparent law on the books that requires an aircraft to fly with a working restroom, the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986, applies to planes with more than one aisle that were delivered or refurbished after April 1992. That's a huge loophole, given the number of jets that are older or have just one aisle. Plus, federal law seems to be mum when it comes to the all-important passenger-to-toilet ratio on a plane.

Of course, airlines don't exploit this regulatory lapse. United, like other domestic and international airlines, operates all its planes - no matter their age or size - with a full complement of working restrooms. Most of the time. "If a lavatory is malfunctioning, we will close it down and refer customers to an alternative one on the plane," said a United spokeswoman, Robin Urbanski. "If more than one lavatory is malfunctioning, we typically divert the plane."

What exactly does the law say about airborne restrooms? Aside from the Air Carrier Access Act, not much. Federal law makes some passing references to toilets (for example, relating to the installation of smoke detectors). I found at least one state public-health ordinance that appears to require a working bathroom on a plane. Other than that, the law seems to be as quiet as an unoccupied outhouse.

"It is completely discretionary," said Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines. "The captain has the ultimate say about whether to fly or not, when there are a certain number of lavs that are not working. It just depends on the length of the flight, and several other factors."

I asked American about its bathroom policy because one of its passengers recently experienced a problem with the restrooms on a flight from Dallas to Columbus, Ohio. The regional jet had only one restroom, which started backing up shortly after the plane took off.

"For health reasons, we always hydrate thoroughly before and during flights," explained Roy M. Bohlin, a professor at California State University in Fresno. "With about an hour to go on the flight, our 9-year-old son needed to use the restroom and found it out of order."

Mr. Bohlin pleaded with the flight attendant to open the bathroom, but by the time the crew member understood the urgency of the situation, and agreed to unlock the restroom, it was too late. "Of course, our son was humiliated to have urinated in his pants and on the seat and was very uncomfortable for the rest of the trip," he said.

American Airlines apologized to the family and sent them a flight voucher, agreeing that it probably could have opened the restroom door sooner to accommodate the boy.

But such incidents suggest that there may be a bigger question that the rules need to address. Should a plane be required to fly with a certain number of working restrooms - and what happens when the restrooms don't work? Should the aircraft divert to the nearest airport? And if so, under what circumstances? Maybe that kind of decision is too important to be left to pilots. After all, it is their job to fly the plane, not decide who gets to use the bathroom.

At least that is the contention of David Fink, one of the passengers on the United flight from Los Angeles to Sydney. Mr. Fink, a corporate strategy consultant from Washington, remembers that the pilot made an announcement saying that instead of diverting the plane to Fiji to fix the toilets, they would remain on course. "He asked us to stop drinking and to not flush the toilets unless we absolutely had to," he said. (Ms. Urbanski of United confirmed that the pilot asked passengers to stop flushing, but says flight attendants continued to serve drinks).

Mr. Fink wonders about the health risks of operating a long flight with so few working bathrooms. So do I.

A functioning toilet is such a basic necessity that the law appears to take it for granted. Perhaps it shouldn't.