Getting a JetBlue flight could soon become easier, as the airline is in the process of creating more room by building 12 additional seats on its A320 planes, Bloomberg reports. But it's dealing with one minor snafu: All the additional passengers will have a lot of trouble using the bathroom, because the Space Flex lavatories it plans to install on these new and improved jets have broken toilets.
The defective bathrooms are already in JetBlue's A321 planes, which the airline has had to stop flying so that they could be repaired. They'll be the subject of a "formal review" next month, during which JetBlue will also figure out what to do about the bathrooms on its new planes. "The last thing we want to do is put this product on our A320 aircraft and then have to bring them back for service," JetBlue Chief Financial Officer Steve Priest said on a conference call.
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It sounds like it's not just the bathrooms that are having some issues. "Equipment quality hasn’t been up to standard and we’ve seen alignment issues in the installation," JetBlue spokesman Doug McGraw told Bloomberg. "These problems are leading to a high rate of inoperable parts and out-of-service lavatories."
The A320 planes currently house 150 seats, and the update would bring them up to 162, leading to an estimated $100 million more per year in revenue. The new bathrooms are part of a more compact cabin that should make more room for the additional passengers.
The new design will also leave passengers with less leg room, Skift reports. But on the plus side, the planes will have bigger screens that you can hook up to your own devices, along with over 100 TV stations.
We've reached out to JetBlue for comment and will update this article accordingly if we hear back.