JetBlue’s (JBLU) plan to bring in an additional $100 million in annual revenue by increasing seats on its Airbus A320s has come at the cost of one crucial element – functional bathrooms.
The airline wants to use a denser seating configuration on its A320s, raising the total capacity to 162 passengers from 150 currently. To achieve that, it is installing a combined galley and lavatory module supplied by Zodiac Aerospace called the Space Flex version 2.
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Bloomberg reported the lavatories supplied by Zodiac have already been installed in some of the 21 A320 aircraft, but reported a spokesman as saying that “equipment quality hasn’t been up to standard and we’ve seen alignment issues in the installation…These problems are leading to a high rate of inoperable parts and out-of-service lavatories.”
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Chief Financial Officer Steve Priest told an analyst call Tuesday that Jetblue will now need to conduct a “formal review” in November with Airbus (EADSY) and Zodiac to assess how to proceed with the cabin reconfiguration.
“The last thing we want to do is put this product on our A320 aircraft and then have to bring them back for service,” Priest said.
