Dealing with excrement
 

I was recently on a transatlantic sector with a legacy carrier when the person before me coated the toilet bowl in some of the stinkiest [redacted by moderator] I have ever come across. [redacted by moderator] revolting.

Why are there no toilet brushes in aircraft toilets? Safety reasons?

I agree that is disgusting. I think part of the problem is that there is no water in the toilets. As far as brushes, I don't know why not. If there were, we would have to rely on each person to clean up after themselves, which may not happen. I'm certainly not going to clean up someone else's mess.

poor tony, wait til you ride a russian train.

It's disgusting, but don't worry it won't creep up and touch you.

How would you clean the brush? You know that someone would try to use the sink to do so. I suppose some sort of kit could be developed that involves a plastic wand and disposable head where the head would be flushable, but the proper use of this without dirtying the rest of the lav or clogging the toilet could probably only be done by someone trained to do so.

And that brings up another question: tools aside, is it within a FA's job description to deal with this sort of situation? I would imagine that on a long-haul flight, one lav per cabin could probably be taken out of service per flight without a huge impact on wait times. Is that what tends to happen if a particular bad "situation" comes to the attention of the crew? Or do they just let each passenger make their own discovery?

I have seen the European and Asian airline crews on long-haul flights clean up some disgusting messes of a restroom -- for example vomit or diarrhea around toilet and sometimes even the walls of the restroom. Seeing US airline FAs doing such is less common.

I have seen some flight crews basically reserve a bathroom for crew members only by locking it up and keeping the "occupied" indicator showing on the locked restroom door.

Emirates carries 2 crew on the A380 whose only job is to clean the toilets on long-haul flights.

Pocket hand sanitizer and tissues are valuable in many situations.

Tell the FA that the facility needs cleaning.

Use a different lav. Unless on a small regional jet, you should have other options. Raising it to an FA might have them think you were the cause of the mess?

200 people, together for multiple meals, and it's common sense that there will be lots of voiding activity going on. If cleaning the lavs is NOT part of a FAs job, I would be very surprised. After all even if every is "careful", a lav used 100 times will need some attention.

Now that being said, just because it is the FAs job doesn't mean they will do it. They are human and humans often try to get away with doing as little work as possible. So it wouldn't surprise me that an FA tries to ignore the lav conditions.

couple of the FA's posted that putting bags on the racks was not part of their job. if they won't touch a bag, forget the toilets. i bring washable slippers, and a plastic storage bag.

I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, I want a clean loo. On the other hand, I don't know if I want the person cleaning the loo, clearing up vomit, and other bodily fluids which could be very harmful to ones health, then serving me my meal. Yes, gloves and aprons go some ways, but on an aircraft where they only have those little sinks to get themselves clean, I am not sure how clean one can really get.

Isn't there a old saying...

"[redacted by moderator] happens"

What's the alternative? Leave the poop and vomit, and shut down the restrooms one by one?
Tell the passengers to clean it themselves?
Hire a person who's only job is to keep the lavs clean?