Airbus A319

Airbus A319

Passenger Jet, Northwest Airlines

Reviewed June 7th, 2004

I remember back in the heyday of Air-Travel when you know you could walk off an airplane with a tote-bag of souveniers; pillow, blanket, plastic-wings, silverware, and little bars of soap. Nowadays, in the age of heightened airline security, where they're just as worried about what your taking off the plane as they are what you're bringing onto it, the silverware is plastic, the pillows pracitcally disentigrate when you touch them, they don't give out wings, and the stupid airlines became financially reponsible and started using pump soap (Note, the pumps are not removable, and they tend to notice if they're forcefully removed.)

One thing hasn't changed though, those high-pressure vacu-crappers. There's always a warning label on the toilet telling you to close the lid before you flush, they say it so you don't get splattered with disinfectant, I think it's because your eyeballs will get sucked out and flushed down the commode if you're not careful. It\'s funny, when you're on a plane, the air-noise, the sound of the engines, and the pressurized cabin tend to muffle all noises within the plane... except for the gol-darned vacu-crappers.

This seems to be turning into more of a political statement than a restroom review... so, without further ado:

It was clean. It was warm, the room lit up when you locked the door. The sink was tiny, and the empty bar-soap dispensers made me nostalgic for restroom-pilfering episodes of days past, but I was pleasantly suprised to get warm water from the faucet, and the towels/kleenex dispensers were well stocked. It may seem like I gave this an overly generous rating considering the bland utilitarian nature of such a facility, but I just gotta hand it to the designers, being able to eliminate, while 10,000 feet in the air is just really cool. Also, the airline manufacturers fixed that 'blue-fluid' thing that kept separating the engines from the fuselage, and I'm happy for that.

I had to change my 18 month old in one of these things, there's a flip-down tray for changing babies, and it's actually quite roomy. When I brought her into the restroom, she thought it was pretty funny to be standing up on the tray while the plane was turning. It was apparantly quite a different sensation for her to be lying-down and bare-bottomed. I think her screaming actually contended with the ear popping (or is it ear-sucking) 'WHOOSH' of the toilet.

One saving grace the that toilets in the Airbus A319 have is that there is actually a three second delay from the time that you press the flush-button to the actual flush. If you pee, put the lid down, wash your hands, and then flush, you have just enough time to get out of the loo before it implodes on itself... though people tend to start at someone exiting any type of bathroom with that much haste.

RESTROOM RATING: 5
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