China Southern Encourages Passengers To Use Restrooms Before Flight

On first flush... er, make that first blush... it sounds like a yet-another egregious airline cost-cutting move. An airline in China has begun encouraging passengers to use the restroom before they board flights, saying the move will help save fuel.

China Southern Airlines -- perhaps best known to Aero-News readers for its groundbreaking work in porcine transportation -- says it hopes to reduce costs by discouraging (human) passengers from using the lavatories onboard its airliners.

Why? Because a single flush of an airliner lav at 30,000 feet, the airline says, uses an additional 2/10 of a gallon of fuel. That may not sound like much... but in this age of high fuel prices, it adds up.

"The energy used in one flush is enough for an economical car to run at least 10km," pilot Liu Zhiyuan said, according to China's Xinhua news service.

Discouraging (but not banning, of course) passengers from using the facilities onboard the plane for short-haul flights is just one way China Southern is looking to cut costs. Other measures like cutting down on the number of pillows and blankets, and carrying less potable water onboard, have been de rigueur for US carriers for years... but are new to China.

China Southern's main goal is to improve its financial performance, after a loss on the year. But the airline's "no-lav" policy is also winning favor from environmentalists, who say the less fuel a plane burns, the less pollution is discarded into the air.

"More companies are trying to portray themselves as trying to help the environment," said activist Liang Ying to London's Guardian newspaper. "The best motivation to save energy is to ... save money."

It also stands to reason that the less the onboard lavs are used... well, the better the cabin will probably smell, too. Unless you're on one of the pig-hauling flights, anyway.

FMI: www.cs-air.com/en