Take a seat on the Zodiac Revolution and experience the future of airline toilets
Most of us don't think about airplane toilets until we're shifting our weight from side to side in the galley, waiting to see which of the two red OCCUPIED signs will disappear from a locked lavatory door first. Although there have been countless innovations throughout airplane cabins in the past two decades, the toilets themselves haven't had any major cosmetic or mechanical facelifts, or lid-lifts, or however you'd accurately describe them.
That's where the Zodiac Revolution comes in, a not-at-all humbly named toilet that made its debut at the recent Aircraft Interiors Expo. According to its manufacturer, Zodiac Aerospace, the Revolution will benefit both passengers and the aircraft mechanics who get stuck trying to repair nonfunctional or non-flushing toilets.
The stainless steel bowl in the traditional airplane toilet is coated with Teflon, making it as non-stick as your frying pans (a good thing, if you think about it), but that coating will eventually get less slippery with time. The French company says its Revolution is made of a new material that is just as slick but significantly lighter.
Our new bowl is made out of a material which has similar or higher lubricity to the current Teflon and can offer up to a 30% weight savings from the traditional stainless steel bowl.
Zodiac has also made the toilet more easily repairable. According to Skift, current "full-assembly" toilets have to be completely removed from the lavatory "even for something as minor as a scratch on the bowl." But the Revolution (or the French Revolution, as we'd like to call it) has a number of parts that can be easily switched out and each replacement part would fit every toilet, unlike the current "left-hand pipe" or "right-hand pipe" versions that can vary from aircraft to aircraft.
The vacuum toilet was patented in 1975 by inventor James Kemper, a man who should've been commemorated on a license plate just like the Wright Brothers. Boeing installed the first vacuum toilets in their lavatories in 1982. According to the Wall Street Journal, there are six major manufacturers in the airplane toilet business (there's a fun fact for your next cocktail party) but Zodiac is the industry leader. In 2013, it had "60,000 vacuum toilets flying every day," or around 75% of the market.
There, now you have something to think about while you wait to hear a muffled flush from behind one of those locked doors.