Lufthansa is bringing five of their Airbus A340-600 aircraft back into service from summer 2022. This means economy class passengers can once again enjoy the unique experience of toilets downstairs.
All five bathrooms are located in what would usually be the cargo hold. This frees up space on the main deck for more seats, so economically this must have worked for the German airline.
Lufthansa A340 Toilets Downstairs
Checking the seating plan on the Lufthansa website shows the downstairs area quite clearly. The stairs are in the centre of the cabin, where rows 38, 39 and 40 are located.
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- The rear section seat map of the Lufthansa A340-600.
Space for the five toilets are clearly marked. Pleasingly, someone decided to take a video on their flight showing this area, which you can see below.
Hopefully there wouldn’t be too many queues up the stairs into the cabin at the end of long flights. Nothing is worse than having people standing near your seat waiting for free toilets.
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- Looks interesting, doesn’t it?
The stairs have lights on each tread, which must be handy on overnight flights when the cabin is darkened. It wouldn’t be good to have people falling up and down the stairs all the time, that’s for sure!
Overall Thoughts
Since Lufthansa is bringing back the Airbus A340-600 for a year from 2022, it will be your last chance to try the unusual experience of peeing in the cargo hold. Economy class passengers on the Star Alliance carrier must be looking forward to this!
The aircraft will all be based in Munich and the reason for this is that they have a first class cabin. With the retirement of the Lufthansa A380, the only other planes with first class are the Boeing 747-8s, and they all fly out of Frankfurt. Once the new A350s arrive, the A340s will be retired… again!
Have you ever experienced the Lufthansa downstairs toilets in economy class? What are they like? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Adam Moreira via Wikimedia Commons.
Downstairs image via Infiniteflight.
Seat map via Lufthansa.
My wife and I flew on one of these planes. The downstairs toilets worked pretty well. As others have mentioned, there is a bit more space down there for waiting and stretching one’s legs while waiting for a vacancy. It was nice that you didn’t feel you were in the way the whole time, bothering folks seated nearby, or in the way of the flight attendants trying to work. Also, by going downstairs, you could basically wait in line for five toilets at once, versus waiting for just one or two. The line move fairly quickly. And as others have… Read more »
That’s great feedback to hear. You make a really good point on the waiting and not bothering people seated nearby. Having people standing in the aisle next to you waiting for a toilet is never particularly nice, as they’re sort of in your personal space to one extent or another. Thanks for taking the time to send that in, really appreciate it!
Really appreciated the downstairs lavatories. There wasn’t a queue at any time. The lavs are more spacy. Used the rail and space to do some stretching as well as stair climbing – there wasn’t any turbulence nor anybody else around.
Also economy seats were bigger and spread out, not cramped together. There were only 2 seats where normally there are 3. We were seated in the 2-3-2 section toward the back in the 2 window seats. Nice airplane.
Sounds great! There are still some of them around at the moment, but they are quite rare. People I have spoken to really liked those downstairs toilets! Thanks for the comment!
My husband and I are flying on this plane in Sept. Are all the economy seats more spacious? Or just the ones in the back of the plane? We are currently in row 37, seats H and K, a 2-4-2 section. But I noticed the 2-3-2 in the back and they are still very empty.
You can see the Lufthansa seat maps for the Airbus A340 to scale here – https://www.aerolopa.com/lh-airbus-a340-gallery – which should helps. The seats will be the same size and spaced the same way. The back of the aircraft tapers inwards, so they have to remove a seat for that reason. You’ll see at the link. Have a good flight!
What are they like?
They close off the stairs when there’s turbulence. When it’s open, it can be a challenge to walk while there are bumps due to minor turbulence.
The good part is the lavs are slightly bigger, easier to change into pajamas, which I did. There is also a large area big enough to wait down there. LH had a snack basket there. Easy to take more because there’s no FA there and people think they are not being watched. I wonder if there’s a camera in the area?
The best thing is that it’s unusual.
Nice that they are bigger than usual as changing in some airlines toilets is a bit of a mission due to the lack of space. Unusual place for a snack basket though, but I noticed that in the video too. I’d say it works though. Good point on the space to wait, it does seem like a roomy area. You’d think there would be a camera there – there certainly are a bunch on other aircraft, more than people realise. I’d love to go on this as it’s so different, but can’t think of anywhere I’d want to go from… Read more »