Posted by The only thinking I have ever done in an airplane loo is… try not to touch anything. I’ve frequently calculated the hours before I’ll get to the nice clean spacious hotel one, occasionally I find myself worrying about whether the person in there before me has been sucked onto the bowl (this’ll no likely be due to the urban myth about aircraft toilet disembowelment no doubt).
I am never very comfortable in an aircraft dunny. It’s a quick pee for me and I’m out of there.
I am always terrified I’ll open the wee cantilever door to find some dear old lady sitting upon the throne unaware of the need to have locked the door with a solid slide of the bolt. There’s never enough water, space or proper towels.
Except that one time I flew on a Qantas flight, first class on a 747. We had a toilet set aside for 8 of us as big as the cockpit. Marble bench, string quartet music (for all I know they may having been playing in there with me somewhere). There was a porthole window on to the sky. So we chaps could wave to flyers in other aircraft in the most inappropriate ways. Mind you if any fellow flyer was close enough to see my rude waving I was in the right place given the pending doom it would have signified.
The washrooms in business class on the Singapore Airlines A380 were rather pleasant. But they were brand new when I first met them. The ones in economy on a recent Lufthansa A380 flight resembled glorified portaloos which we in Canterbury know all to well. All grey plastic and Tupperware’esque molding.
The worst ever were those on a Singapore Airlines flight from Dubai to Mauritius. Unspeakable evil had been wrought in one of them. I opened the door and at first I thought a vampire had been staked in the style of True Blood. I closed the door and walked back to my seat traumatised.
And here’s a thing, do you flush the moment you’ve finished? (thus signaling your impending exit and forcing a more hurried ablution) or do you flush when the hand washing is done and dusted? Either way there is invariably a face to great you the moment you exit the cubicle.
Something I really dislike…
A Mathom House of Sorts 
Ha, ha, ha… Excellent post Mr H…the last airplane loo experience left me. traumatised!! After a horrendous honeymoon in Kefalonia where I suffer major leg trauma from falling of a moped, I was escorted on to the plane in a wheelchair. Because of my injury I had to sit at the front, so I wouldn’t slow down any evacuation should the plane plummet.. It was a diabolical holiday fraught with foreign doctor and medical bills… I. Hobbled to the loo, while sitting in state, the seat belt sign flashed on.. When I opened the Door, I was a little worried, all of the people on the plane were looking at me.. My heart sunk…. We were going to crash!!!!! This only lasted a minute when I realised they were watching an in flight movie Dumb and Dumber.. Boy!.. Did I feel a……pratt:)
I read recently that Qantas were showing the film ‘Flight’ as part of their inflight entertainment selection. That would have been fun, watching the faces of the nervous flyers in the cabin during the air crash scenes. Probably would have caused a rush on the loos!