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Whoever thought you’d be counting bathrooms in an airplane. Actually, it might help avoid an unpleasant surprise. Some carriers are adding seats in coach. New materials make the seats more comfortable and less bulky. However, they do not add lavatories to handle the additional demand for relief in the air. A measure of luxury in the air certainly includes seat comfort and meals, but it could soon be measured by your odds of reaching a lavatory before your fellow passengers. It would be a very good idea to check a seat map at your airline’s web site or at SeatGuru before booking your flight. Do the math. Whichever cabin you’re booking, consider the number of passengers per lavatory. This is particularly important on long haul flights. Airlines have been running ads about their new cabin upgrades. “We’re spending hundreds of millions to upgrade our fleet”, crows one CEO. Pay close attention. As a striking example, the largest domestic US airline recently upgraded the seats on its transcontinental Boeing 777 aircraft. In First Class, where a ticket from San Francisco to Frankfurt can cost $15,000, they reduced the number of seats from twelve to eight - using approximately the same floor space as before. That sounds like it would be much more luxurious, but they eliminated one of the two restrooms in that cabin. So now they’ve got eight persons waiting for one lavatory instead of twelve people using two. By contrast, the flagship German carrier reduced the number of First Class passengers from sixteen to eight, but… they still have two restrooms - with windows - and each passenger gets the space of two seats. Not all planes, flights and airlines are created equal. Do your research. No matter what cabin you choose to travel in, be sure you know what you’re paying for.