fly747first

I think it is actually a violation of FAA rules. AA cabin crew explained to me that the reason they stopped preventing Y pax from using F lavatories on domestic flights is because of some FAA rule.

bocastephen

Never listen to any airline cabin crew about FAA rules - most of them wouldn't know a legitimate FAA regulation if it pee'd on their leg, which is why they enjoy making up their own rules.

There is a TSA rule that requires passengers to remain in their assigned cabin while on an international flight enroute to the USA (and I believe while departing, but I am not certain), but nothing for domestic flights that I am aware of. The FAA could care less who uses what lavatory, but an airline's product team should know enough that A) premium cabin passengers by and large do not appreciate their lavatories being used by main cabin customers especially if that means they need to wait, and B) moving a potential cluster of people from the back of the aircraft and up to the front premium cabin so whatever health concern existed before can now be shared by people at the back and the front

United's policy change here is just dumb no matter how you slice it.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

4 flights since this started. Haven’t seen much in way of annoyingly increased traffic. FA’s definitely do not overtly encourage coach passengers to use front lavs.

LondonElite

I think that’s just domestic, not international Polaris.

miamiflyer8

Haven't seen anything that says this. I think you are mixing up with AA's policy where domestic is OK but not INTL.

LondonElite

Are you sure? I have not been on a Polaris flight in a few months, but the J lavs were always very closely guarded. But I don’t know current policy.

Edit: my posts were moved here from another thread. I’m still not clear whether this applies to Polaris or not.

miamiflyer8

I read up on the articles from OMAAT and Live and Let's Fly and neither say anything that excludes Polaris. Lucky's article does confirm the AA policy.

ainternational

I’ll be on Polaris to and from Japan next week and will try to remember to report back.

RobOnLI

Had two more domestic flights today and about 10+ since Nov 1 started. Every single flight has used the old announcements of "please use the lavatory in your ticketed cabin." Since that was almost never enforced to begin with I haven't noticed an increase in traffic in the front of the plane (yet).

-RM

miamiflyer8

Please do. I guess this is a reason to pick away from bulkheads or the mini-cabin if foot traffic increases.

I guess since flights aren't very full anyway there is little need to venture out to the front lav. On a normal day I've seen people try and get into the fwd cabin given the FAA regulated fishnet curtains used by US carriers. Proper curtains on non-US carriers work much better IME.

fly747first

Very funny, haha. However, not sure how accurate that statement is... in the past AA's cabin crews closely guarded the F lavs on domestic flights so I do think it is possible that the FAA changed rules for domestic flights.

RobOnLI

Flights are actually very full. Every single flight in the past two months for me (save for one that I can think of) has had the message at check-in that my flight is full and I can change if I want to. Of course the bar for that message is 70% full. But I would say most of my flights are at 80%+.

-RM

dcpdxtrans

I disagree: I found FAs routinely enforced the lava policies, esp int'l.

txpenny

Really, how far in the past?

When my youngest left the house in 2013, I returned to full-time weekly travel, mostly on AA, and all in J. I have NEVER seen such behavior by the flight attendants.

What I do see is that AA does a fantastic job off keeping Y passengers from queuing in the J cabin. They allow them to queue near the bulkhead seat in Y. I've never had to queue behind a Y pax.

Often1

Putting aside the DHS rule prohibiting passenger movement between cabins on international flights destined for the US, the primary purpose of the rule is to provide a better travel experience to F pax. Nobody hanging around the F aisle (talking about standard single aisle) and no long wait to use the lav. Maybe a bit cleaner because it gets less use.

Now, the goal is to make most efficient use of the lavs without regard to cabin. If the aircraft has 3 lavs with one forward and two in the rear with 120 pax, the goal is that there are 40 pax per lav rather than 12 in F with 1 and 118 with 2.