yes it true, thomas cook are making a song a dance about painting the toilets. On a serious note though its to help partially sighted people around them better.
All in all it looks like thomas cook are upgrading everywhere, just not the area people want, leg room.
And also in other news from Thomas Cook
An update of the website now allows interactive booking of specific seat numbers and rows. The service virtually cuts out any human interfirence at the thomas cook end after massive demand for the seat number service from when it was launched in May this year. The new service comes with an update of ground computer systems.
BRIGHTER LOOS ON THOMAS COOK AIRLINES WILL HELP DISABILED PASSENGERS
Manchester-based holiday airline Thomas Cook is to repaint the toilet compartments of its fleet of 24 airliners – so that partially sighted passengers can more easily locate essential fittings.
Use of contrasting colours will enable passengers to identify such items as the toilet button and the door handle.
The plan was unveiled by the airline’s executives in a meeting at their Manchester Airport headquarters with Joe Hennessey, who chairs a national voluntary committee on mobility for disabled people.
Joe, 62, who uses a wheelchair and has been campaigning for the disabled for over 40 years, said: “Introducing multi-coloured toilet compartments is a splendid idea. I am sure it will be welcomed by the many thousands of passengers with disabilities who fly with this airline each year and, hopefully the scheme will be adopted by other operators”
George Blundell-Pound, the airline’s director for external affairs, said: “In addition to the colour differentiation, we shall incorporate more powerful lighting to make internal toilet fittings easier to recognize.
“Our previous décor policy has involved gentle lighting and restful tones like blue-grey for toilet furnishings. Fittings have always been designed to be smooth and flush with their surrounds, partially to avoid possible injury, so they have not been easy for the partially sighted to identify.”
Joe has been campaigning for years for airlines to install a much greater proportion of aircraft seats to have moveable arm-rests. The suggestion was included among the recommendations in the UK Code of Practice published early last year. He said: “If you have to be lifted into your seat, as I am, it is extremely awkward for your two helpers, already working in a cramped space, who have to lift you over a rigid arm-rest.
“But if the arm-rests can be moved my helpers are able, with relative ease, to lift me from my on-board wheelchair and simply slide me into the seat “
Thomas Cook are having problems with a high proportion of wheelchair users who fail to warn the airline of their special needs when they book their flight. George said that two-thirds of the 22,000 wheelchair passengers they carried last year failed to give advance notice.
There was also concern, for safety reasons, about passengers with hearing difficulties who did not notify the airline either before travelling, at check-in or even on the aircraft.
Blundell-Pound added: “We ask in our pre-flight literature and on the website for passengers with any special needs to warn us beforehand. There is a risk that those with hearing difficulties may miss an urgent emergency announcement.
“Although one in five of the population has some form of deafness problem, we were only given advance warning last year by 380 passengers that they had that special need, so lots are not telling us. It is an educational process, particularly with elderly people who don’t like mentioning that they are deaf – although our cabin crews are trained to notice any passengers not picking up on broadcast messages.”
Joe Hennessey had also attended the meeting to review reports on the effectiveness of several equipment items now being used by special needs passengers, including an air chair narrow enough to pass easily along an airliner aisle and a special harness to keep children with cerebral palsy and similar disabilities upright in their seat /ends
Source: Thomascookairlines.com
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November 13, 2004 at 11:09 pm