Is the Oasis / MAX lavatory Air Carrier Access Act / ACA compliant?
 

Hi-

Hearing that they are only 24 inches wide got me thinking this must be a violation of the (American's With Disabilities Act?) I'm pretty sure the standard width for a door is 30 inches in a public or commercial building. I don't see how airplanes can be exempted since disabled people fly all the time and are allowed to board sometimes before anyone else.

I'm hoping a law-suit gets the bathroom size back to more usable standards for all of us. I'm not Disabled but I'm 6' 5" and 290lbs. When sitting down my hips are about 23 inches wide! I'm going to have to make sure to never fly on one of these awful planes.

-Paul

The Air Carrier Access Sct applies, not ADA.

I assume they are compliant. They likely would not have gotten designed, certified and installed otherwise.

Hint - an airplane is not a public or commercial building.

In general, it's a pretty good guess that any commercial aircraft that has been through the extremely rigorous certification process actually meets the certification requirements.

https://www.transportation.gov/acces...sory-committee


<redacted> it seems the DOT and the ACCESS Advisory Committee has to an agreement on bathroom standards for single aisle aircraft with more than 125 seats. <redacted>the ground based standard for a doorway is 32 inches, so I would expect some new rule where at least one bathroom door has to be at least 32 inches wide.

-Paul

Hint: it's pretty hard for an aircraft to be held responsible for certification to a potential future rule which doesn't exist now and might possibly exist at some unspecified time in the future.

In the meantime it's a pretty safe bet that, given the extensive regulatory and certification process that commercial airlines are subject to in the US, AA isn't flying around with illegal lavs.

Sure but this would be for future rule making only. Any currently certified configuration would continue to be certified forever as long as nothing changed. This is just an industry group recommendation we will see what actually gets adopted.

Whatever the minimum legal requirements, it is a shame that, when ordering new equipment, AA hasn't aspired to meeting the foreseeable needs of passengers with disabilities.

There's still a (slightly) larger lav in front of F. Since AA does not have a policy strictly against Y pax using the F lav, any special needs pax (disability or oversized person) could use the forward lav.

That's my backup plan if I get equipment swapped onto something with the "Oasis" config. Which for now is fairly easy to avoid.

“American Airlines” and “aspire” sometimes do not belong in the same sentence. AA has prioritized seat density on its narrowbodies aircraft going forward - in Economy, denser than on Southwest. Perhaps when the 7M8 and Project Oasis include most of the AA narrowbodies, it will bring about the passengers’ “Project Awaysis”?

AA thinks it's in an era where compliance alone is good enough for the people in back. AA configures Max 8s with 172 seats; there's a Max 8 version with additional exits that is certified for 200. Things can get much, much worse.

If there is a new lav size rule that goes into effect surely carriers will negotiate a generous transition period and then rip out a few seats where required. Until then...

If you look inside an AA MAX 8, there is not much differentiating it from the inside of a Spirit/Frontier/Allegiant aircraft. In fact, service might be better on the latter as well.