MUMBAI: Claustrophobic though it may be, once the door is shut and locked, an aircrafttoilet turns temporarily into a personal sanctuary where a passenger can escape from the crowd and in those private moments continue to stay civil or let go of the good manners and leave the loo in a mess.
Unfortunately, for airlines across the world, what a passenger does behind the closed toilet door can have a direct impact on its earnings. It’s the one aspect that airlines have absolutely no control over, but it decides whether the aircraft will depart on time for the next flight or, worse, whether it will be grounded for toilet repairs.
“If the passenger throws any object into the toilet like a plastic bottle, soiled infant diapers, a bunch of tissue paper or any item, it could damage its vacuum flush system. Then the object has to be located, it has to be removed and the flush system repaired. The next flight is delayed, the losses are multifold,” said an airlinesource.
Like it happened on the previous Saturday’s Delhi-Chicago Air India flight. When it departed, only eight out of the 12 toilets were functioning. En route, during the 17-hour-long flight, even the eight toilets were out of order. With no toilets to use, more than 340 passengers, including seven infants, had to stay put with bladders full till the flight landed. Whether AI had maintained its toilets well remains to be seen. The AI spokesperson was not available for comment. But irrespective of whether the toilets were maintained well or not, what the incident has brought to fore is the issue of “toilet abuse” by passengers, as certain airlines call it. And for years now, Air India has been a victim of this.
“In August last year, AI’s Newark-Mumbai flight made an unscheduled stop in Istanbul as all the toilets were unserviceable. But it was particularly bad in 2016 between the period of June 5 and August 23 when blocked toilets left behind by passengers delayed a total of 14 flights to destinations such as London, Newark, Chicago and New York,” said an Air India official, requesting anonymity. These are all long-haul flights going to destinations with passengers that one would assume know how to use a toilet properly. But the reality is quite different. Anyone who has ever flown on an Air India international flight would have seen that the toilets work when the flight departs, but as hours fly, there will be at least a toilet or two that has been rendered unserviceable because of either unhygienic use of the loo or because it has been left blocked by a discarded object.
A senior AI cabin crew member said, “The older aircraft used the blue liquid chemical toilet flush system. When there was a blockage, we would pour hot water and then flush after some time and it would often clear the blockage. Now, newer aircraft such as the Boeing 777 and Boeing 787 have a vacuum flush which is advanced technology. But once these toilets are blocked, there is nothing we can do.” When a toilet cannot be used, a log entry is made by the cabin crew. “On an average, there would be 30-60 log entries a month by cabin crew about toilets that have been rendered useless by passengers who dumped bottles, rags or other such items into the commode,” he added.
An AI official said that airlines the world over face the problem of clogged toilets (this has been discussed on airline forums with inputs from aircraft manufacturers on how to remedy the problems, but not to the extent that Indian carriers face.
The problem has as much to do with civil behaviour as it has to do with cultural differences. Aircraft toilets are made to western specifications, with toilet paper, while Indians are habituated to the use of water to clean.
“Some passengers don’t have any concern for other users. They leave the toilet messy with water everywhere and worse they dump paper cups and bottles used to fill water into the commode,” he added. Airlines have no option but to spend more on repairs and maintenance of toilets and carry out awareness on their use through onboard announcements, demo videos and so on.