Something happened in U.S. airport design over the past decade or so. Restrooms, toilets, loos, or “sanitary facilities” as I recently read — whatever you want to call them — became, well, nice.
I first took note of this trend when Baltimore-Washington International Airport won the America’s Best Restroom award last year for its new facilities in Concourse B. An award? For the toilet? What?
That award, and the subsequent coverage, sent me down the drain, so to speak. Gone on the “public bus station restrooms” of old, as Maryland Aviation Administration Chief Engineer Paul Shank recently told The Washington Post, and in are facilities that have privacy, occupied lights, and orchids — yes, real orchids.
So why did airport loos become such a big deal?
“Customer satisfaction has become one of the primary drivers for the success of an airport, and restrooms and ancillary facilities often provide the first and last impression of a destination,” wrote Joseph Navarrete of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in a 2021 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Airport Cooperative Research Program report.
And high customer satisfaction is worth a lot to airports. For example, the widely-respected Airport Council International (ACI) World’s annual airport quality service rankings and other surveys weigh restrooms — or at least travelers’ satisfaction with restrooms — highly.
Stephen Van Beek, an aviation consultant at Steer, wrote on LinkedIn that “some bonus systems are tied to these [customer service] scores so airport management has every incentive to upgrade them and keep them clean.”
“The most important moment in a terminal is the restroom. It really changes someones’ perspective if they don’t have a good experience there,” Director of HOK’s global Aviation + Transportation group Paul Auguste told me in 2020. Auguste has worked on multiple airport projects, including Terminal B at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
And the orchids I mentioned? A staple in the loos in the new Terminal B at LaGuardia.
What makes a nice airport loo? As a self-described AvGeek, I give bonus points for any restroom with panoramic windows of the ramp — like in Denver airport’s recent concourse extensions by Jacobs and HNTB. Windows also bring natural light into what is often a, if not bleak, utilitarian internal building space.
The TRB report offers a more concrete set of criteria. For one, restrooms must reflect what have become standard features of contemporary design — open entryways, touchless features, etc. But also:
“While aesthetics are important and certainly impact a traveler’s perceptions of cleanliness and safety, function still rules. Toilets must work and be clean; dispensers need to have ample paper supply; there should be a clean, dry location to place belongings at the sink; the soap dispensers must work; and amenity spaces need to be located where they are needed with the necessary accommodations.”
It’s not enough just to have windows, or tiled mosaics by local artists as in the widely lauded loos at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Airport restrooms need to be nice and function well.
“We all use them, and they're a great way to judge an airport's level of customer focus,” said Jonathan Woolley, an analyst and researcher, on LinkedIn.
Next time you fly, maybe pay a little more attention to the loo.
Tales from the Road
Running (and cycling) while I travel is one of my favorite pastimes. I plan run routes before I even figure out where I’m going to eat much to the horror of all my food-oriented friends. I managed two runs on a recent trip to Munich, one was a failed attempt to find my son a toy ICE train but the second was a lovely nine-kilometer jaunt with the local group 26.Miles (thanks Andrew Mortensen!). If you’re ever in Munich and want to join a group run, I highly recommend them.
What I’m Writing
Lufthansa debuted and flew its long-delayed Allegris product over the last few weeks. It’s a needed upgrade but almost comical how late it is: The plans were first announced in 2017 with a rollout in 2020, actually unveiled in 2022 with a debut in 2023, and finally actually introduced this year. I took a look at the new product (sans the first class suites) in Munich. (FlightGlobal)
What I’m Reading
Ever wonder, like me, why the sprawling Denver suburbs look so much like California? There’s a good reason for that wrote Caroline Tracey in her excellent long read in the Los Angeles Review of Architecture.
"The aesthetic transformation that made the sprawling suburbs of Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Boise look so similar to one another — and so similar to Southern California, in particular ... That was the work of Southern California homebuilders.”
Some things need a good take down. That’s exactly what Courtney Miller at Visual Approach Analytics did with a recently widely circulated but inaccurate chart on the safety of Boeing versus Airbus planes. His full analysis is well worth a read.
And please check out my friend
’s new newsletter, . His first post is a takedown of Monet’s gardens at Giverny and over tourism.What I’m Listening To
A good listen from Monocle Radio’s The Urbanist on Bengaluru airport’s new Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Terminal 2. The building blends aspects of nature — reflecting Bengaluru’s “garden city” status — with sustainable design.
Today, Explained did a good episode on Venice’s new tourist tax, and the perils of over tourism. Justin Francis, co-founder of Responsible Travel, made a good critique of social media-driven travel where, increasingly, a subset of travelers go somewhere just for the photo, rather than the experience.
“What I cherish about travel is: fulfillment, rejuvenation, adventure, learning — learning about places and people that are very different to me. Sometimes realizing that actually we're more similar than we are different … And by all means, take a photo, too.”