tom911
Dec 5, 05, 10:45 pm
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.
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.
New York Times link (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/business/06soff.html)
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.
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.
New York Times link (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/business/06soff.html)