VX Red Rope & the Main Cabin Expressway to the Lav
 

I'm on an VX A320 MCO-SFO right now, and we're maybe 1 hour 20 minutes into the flight. I'm sitting here doing my work, and guess what's missing Alaska?

Can the folks in SEATTLE at Alaska HDQ have *any* guess what's missing from my flight right now? (besides blankets).

Do the FREQUENT FLYERS want to take a guess?




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a STEADY STREAM OF PEOPLE FROM THE BACK USING OUR LAV.

that's right.

The FA put the red rope up separating our cabins. And it works like a charm.

On my flight SEA to FLL, we had a stream of folks, ALL THE TIME, from Y up into the F lav. I even got cut off for a line of people from Y wanting to use our LAV.

Why is it so hard for Alaska FA's to tell folks, nicely, that they should use one of the 3 lavs in back? Or put up a red rope on AS metal. This is what a PREMIUM CABIN feels like, and looks like.

Please people in Seattle, please. If you want to keep calling this FIRST CLASS, please police the Y folks coming and going into F all the time. Or stop calling this thing First Class - at least Spirit Airlines is honest and calls it merely "Big Front Seat". I'd much appreciate honesty from Seattle than this.

The rope has been so clever -- better than a curtain. That said, I saw this problem in February with a BWI-SFO flight...seems to be FA dependent?

(Surprised at the lack of blankets tho? And I'll ask about the food later. Couldn't eat much from SFO-KOA thanks to the sudden lack of allergen info -- very little was gluten free...)

food was fine, I took the papardelle with veggies - was a lot more tasty than I was expecting.

Its funny watching people try to figure out the rope and then give up and go to the back. Curtain is way too easy to figure out.

Going back to the velvet rope is probably too much to hope for. I'll settle for a curtain. At least it deters (some of) the newbies and the meek.

Most of my AS flight the FA’s tell people from coach to go to the back. Only exception is when the cart is blocking people from heading aft.

Let's build a wall and make the kettle pay for it!

AMEN!

As I (ranted) said in another thread, this is one of the reasons that I prefer SkyWest flights over mainline; some of the SkyWest cabin crew will actually redirect invading Kettles back to their own domain.
The irony, to me, is that the aft lav on the Embraer is FAR larger than the forward. I actually prefer it- it's one of the roomiest lavatories in the sky at the moment. I can actually wash my hands without washing my shirt and pants, and in 2018, that's a feature!

I admit that I have never understand why folks are bothered by coach passengers using the First Class lavatory, but clearly from reading here and having seatmates who complain about, it does bother people.

To my thinking, beyond potentially delaying another passenger from having access to the lavatory, it is not like they are eating first class meals or raiding the First Class beverage cart (which IMHO would be a bigger issue).

Maybe it is my disposition, but there are far worse things that happen on-board aircraft than coach passengers coming forward to relieve themselves, but again I do realize it bothers other passengers and for the most part, I fly airlines which do police use of the forward lavatory.

It also might have something to do with flying many flights from PBI and to a lessor extent FLL where many older passengers have enough trouble making it to the lavatory without having an accident in their pants. Furthermore, on at least two flights from PBI an older passenger came forward to relieve themself, were sent back to coach and then proceeded to have an accident in their pants and we had to smell it for the rest of the flight.

Again, I more than realize that it does bother other folks enough to warrant airlines installing ropes and curtains, but I myself am just not that bothered by it, nor Alaska’s weak enforcement of who can or cannot use the forward lav.

While on some flights, it is not that intrusive, on other flights, it is an hours' long parade, with people standing right next to your seat (until admonished to wait at Row 6), people using your seatback as an armrest or walking aid, and sometimes, causing substantial delay in the use of the West Coast Most disposal room (especially necessary in light of the 2 rounds of PDBs on most flights).

There's only 2 bathrooms in the back- that means it's a long wait for many fliers, and on some VX flights I've seen a line of 10+ people, some of whom wait 20-30 minutes. That's ridiculous.

JetBlue gets it right - anyone on the plane can use any lav, and they have a mid-cabin one on transcons that keep foot traffic through Mint to a minimum.

Alaska's 739s originally came with a mid-cabin lav, no? They were removed to add more seats. That would solve this problem.

Alaska really should install a mid-cabin lav on its 739s. In addition, Alaska needs to better enforce the rule about using the lav in Y if you're seated in Y. Yesterday there was a steady stream of Y passengers using the F lavatory on my SEA-ORD flight.

In defense of the Y passengers, the cart is out for large portions of most flights. Combine that with time the seat belt sign is on and you may have very limited-to-no opportunities to use the back lav on most flights. When you gotta go, you gotta go, and if the forward lav is the only one available to you use that one.

Definitely do not grab people's seats as you walk by though.

Using the seatback as an armrest or walking aid is indeed annoying, but again, maybe from my countless PBI flights over my life, I am somewhat immune to the annoyance as almost every older passenger uses the seatback as either a walking aide or stable surface to help hoist themselves out of the seat.