This is a story from my recent sojourn to Bali.
It comes with diagrams. Believe me, they’re gonna come in handy.
Let’s start with a basic fact: a Boeing 737 can carry 180 passengers.
The seats are arranged three abreast. There’s an aisle and then another three seats abreast on the other side of that aisle.
It goes back 30 rows and looks something like this –
The blue shaded boxes are where we were seated for the six-hour Brisbane to Bali direct flight.
Here’s where the story begins to take off, literally. Cue diagram number two –
That’s right. Diagram 2 has one key difference to diagram 1 – the location of the two on-board toilets. And here’s where the real comedy begins.
The front and rear toilets might look the same according to my diagram, but that would be misleading. There was infact one royal-sized difference between those two toilets, which I will now illustrate via a third diagram. Told you this was a comedy.
Ready?
See those green shaded seats? They’re the first four rows and they were the only 24 passengers onboard the plane permitted to use the front-end toilet. Why? Because they’d paid for 1st class business class tickets.
That’s completely right and normal. You pay a higher price you get privileges and ‘perks’ – if we want to call use of a toilet a ‘perk’. So what’s the hooha?
The hooha – or ‘twist’ if we want to use storyteller’s speak – is there was no curtain separating these front four rows from the rest of the plane. And for clarity, I’m gonna repeat that – THERE WAS NO CURTAIN separating the front four rows from the seats behind.
To remind ourselves of what ‘normal’ looks like in the curtain partitions department, superfluously, examples can be viewed below –
But on this comedic flight, between those front four rows and the seats behind – NO CURTAIN.
Allow me to point out too for the sake of the full mental picture, the seats in these prestige rows were also physically identical to those in the other 26 rows. Identical spacing, identical configuration and identical ‘lack of legroom’. Identical. Identical. Identical.
The passengers were identical too. And by that I mean there wasn’t a pinstripe suit, tie or briefcase to be seen. Just ordinary Aussies dressed in super caszh gear heading off like the rest of the plane on their Bali holiday. As far as I could make out the only difference was they were offered a slightly ‘enhanced’ meal menu.
But back to the toilets. And time to crunch the numbers. What we have is the front 24 passengers using the front toilet, leaving the remaining 156 passengers forced to que for the remaining sole rear-positioned toilet. And keep in mind it’s a full six hour flight.
Are you starting to feel the comedy potential? Not to mention the complaints potential? And maybe, with a few gin and tonics thrown in, the breakout of some old-fashioned, on-board fisticuffs potential?
Thankfully there was no fisticuffs. But comedy? There was more of that than you’d expect at a Three Stooges Film Marathon. Speaking of which…
See, because there was no curtain or sign indicating that that front toilet was reserved exclusively for passengers in those first four rows, punters too many to number seated in the front half of the plane would wander innocently up the aisle to try to use that front toilet, only to be turned away by the uncannily vigilant hostie.
Having to act as a bathroom bouncer for six hours is no easy thing. But that hostie somehow pulled it off, while juggling a horde of other duties, principally the serving of food and drink to the front half of the plane.
The five-star comedy moments took over when the stewardess (bet you haven’t heard that word in a while!), would be distracted by the food and drink duties, while someone made a fast approach up the aisle to the bathroom ‘forbidden zone’.
Typically, they’d get within spitting distance only to be turned away at the last moment by the fleet-footed hostie who’d have to scamper up in pursuit to deliver the toe-curling bad news about it being a NO-GO ZONE. Again, with no sign or curtain to indicate that toilet was for the use of just the first four rows, better make that – PERFECTLY DISGUISED NO-GO ZONE.
I watched in amusement as this pantomime, which included a growing que for the ‘commoners’ rear toilet – reaching at one point 11 people – played out on repeat for the first couple of hours. After that time, economy passengers in the front half of the plane cottoned on to what was happening and gave up trying to enter the forbidden zone.
But not before a golden couple of hours of unintended A-grade entertainment that upped any in-flight movie played out before our eyes.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES? Well, no. Not as classy, but this was most assuredly A TALE OF TWO TOILETS.
