Interesting events with United Airlines

reply to post by mikerussellus


Short flight, 1 'lav.' If they don't have to maintain it, it is a "short turnaround" and wastes no manpower or inventory.

Money saving at the cost of face-saving. It makes them look like a cut-rate operation, but they don't care because their contract is with the carrier, not the passenger. (Just like HMO or workers' comp doctors - they work for they guys paying the bills, not the putative "client.")

Too bad, but that's a few extra bucks in their pockets and they make the FBO use the terminal's resources.

jw

reply to post by jdub297


Makes perfect sense.

thanks.

reply to post by weedwhacker


Careful, Compadre, you are aging yourself......I think you and I are the only ones that remember how the lavs used to work.....

reply to post by jdub297


I remember sitting in a meeting in 2006, pilot union and CEO, COO (low fare carrier)....The many complaints from passengers about the condition of the cabins, filth, smelly lavs, etc, were greeted by a statement by the CEO, and I quote, " # em, there are thousands standing behind them waiting to buy tickets".......Doesn't this describe today's airline industry?

forgot, I cannot use words like that here...so, ATS edited

[edit on 29-8-2009 by habu71]

I find this topic interesting, last year (August 2008) myself and my family were flying from Gatwick to Sanford Florida on a B767, 1 and a half hours into the flight the captain announces that due to 1 of the toilets now being out of service we were turning back to Gatwick.

Needless to say there was a load of p....d off passengers, 3 hours in the air and we ended up where we started.

So I have a few questions

1. How many toilets are on board a B767?
2. How much would it cost to keep said aircraft in the air for 3 hours?
3. The crew were then out of hours so they had to find a replacement crew, how much did that cost?
4. How much is the landing fees at Gatwick for a 767?
5. If we have any 767 pilots here, what are your SOPs for an unusable bog? (toilet for our American friends).

Originally posted by yeebsy
I find this topic interesting, last year (August 2008) myself and my family were flying from Gatwick to Sanford Florida on a B767, 1 and a half hours into the flight the captain announces that due to 1 of the toilets now being out of service we were turning back to Gatwick.

Needless to say there was a load of p....d off passengers, 3 hours in the air and we ended up where we started.

So I have a few questions

1. How many toilets are on board a B767?
2. How much would it cost to keep said aircraft in the air for 3 hours?
3. The crew were then out of hours so they had to find a replacement crew, how much did that cost?
4. How much is the landing fees at Gatwick for a 767?
5. If we have any 767 pilots here, what are your SOPs for an unusable bog? (toilet for our American friends).

1) It would depend a bit on which model 767 and the carrier but there should be at least 6 lavatories on a 767: 2 forward, 1 on each side at the forward edge of the wing and 2 aft.
2) Not as much as it could cost, considering complaints and demands for refunds, etc., to continue on the trip from the UK to Florida. Consider that at 1.5 hours in the air you were not even 1/4 of the way in to a flight of over 8 hours and there are only 30-40 gallons of waste tank space on the average 767.
3) A lot less than the fine for allowing the crew to operate beyond what's allowed by regulations, not to mention lawsuits from passengers were this to be allowed and discovered to have happened.
4) Does it particularly matter? Did you have to drop anything in a collection bin, schilling, pound, euro or dollar even?
5) That would depend somewhat on the number of occupied seats, current condition of the waste tanks, etc. and also what exactly was the cause of the issue- plugged water pumps, latrine would not close after being flushed, etc.

I'm not a pilot and found this information fairly easy to obtain, though most of it is actually based on logic.

reply to post by yeebsy


abecedarian up there covered it pretty well....but, I find the story of an air-return for ONE inop Lav smelling worse than a backed-up lavatory!!!

2. How much would it cost to keep said aircraft in the air for 3 hours?

Depends. But, ballpark figure? About $3000-4000 USD per hour. SO....the story of ONE inop Lav? Something else was afoot, methinks.....

3. The crew were then out of hours so they had to find a replacement crew, how much did that cost?

Well...not much, except in customer satisfaction. This must have been a Charter, since you said it went to Sanford (a smaller airport near Orlando, Florida) instead of to Orlando International. Being a 'satellite' airport, would be less busy, and have lower landing fees. Was it part of some holiday "tour package"??

4. How much is the landing fees at Gatwick for a 767?

Don't know exact figures, but they are based on weight and number of wheels. Figures into the cost per hour, on an average basis.

5. If we have any 767 pilots here, what are your SOPs for an unusable bog? (toilet for our American friends).

It is 'blocked' (door locked from outside...BTW, ALL LAvatory doors can be locked/unlocked from outside!!! Airline crews/maintenance people know how!!).

My company, as most airlines, require a logbook write-up, and an "Inop" sticker be posted, and you're good to go. THIS CAN BE DONE as well, after gate departure!!!

Summation? One Lav inop? NOT worth the expense of an air-return.

Two guesses: There was some other mechanical problem that prohibited the Oceanic Crossing portion of the flight (technical bits here, too much to go into) OR....along with the mechanical aspects, a possible Navigation anomaly they detected that would prevent the extended over-water flight....

OR....they wanted the day off! Knowing that they would "time-out" because of the pilots' flight-time duty limits. BUT, I leave that idea only with tongue firmly in cheek......because, El Capitain would have a lot of 'splainin' to do!!!

I leave with an old, old joke....stems from early days of the high seas:


RULE #1: The Captain is always correct.

RULE #2: IF the Captain is wrong -- see RULE #1.
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edit: abecedarian had this:

Originally posted by abecedarian
...and there are only 30-40 gallons of waste tank space on the average 767.

That figure is not the total on board. There are several holding tanks, shared by multiple lavatorys. Again, depends on options per airline, but at least one forward, and one aft, on the B767. Just to clear that up.

[edit on 31 August 2009 by weedwhacker]

Did you see the Bangladesh airline story, I have refreshed the thread here.
Airline Toilets

Strange........

Very strange.

I just heard about this exact same issue within British domestic flights last week. Coincidence?

Those with knowledge of airport maintainance[sic] may know the answer. Could the problem be fear of handling human waste because of the "Flu Scare".

Sir, I'm neither a medic nor an airline employee, but I would suggest that the virus would cross-infect more easily via the pressurised, recirculated air environment of an aircraft rather than waste matter suspended in chemicals.

A more rational answer would be that as humans are the weakest link in the universe, someone has sent someone a fax/email/radio message etc and multiple persons have responded to it in error.

reply to post by uk today


you only get something like 10mins of air right? just enough to flood your brain with oxygen calming you down.

reply to post by MR BOB

...just enough to flood your brain with oxygen calming you down.

Huh??? You talking about the supplemental O2 for passengers in the decompression emergency scenarios??

Ever breathed pure O2? You cannot tell a difference. It doesn't "calm you down". Where do people get this stuff?

Your O2 masks, in passenger jets, give you a feeble trickle of extra O2, just so you don't suffer brain damage at 35,000 feet. ( Although, with some passengers, it's already too late!! )
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[edit on 4 September 2009 by weedwhacker]