As airlines work to try to distinguish their product from their competitors
, they seek to provide a little extra luxury. Some planes are even equipped with hot showers.
Not many planes have showers, unless you're going to count a wash in the sink as showers. But an increasing number or more high-end airliners are considering the importance of keeping their customers happy and are developing ways of fitting showers into the plane's cabin, but don't expect everyone to be able to use them, and don't expect them on short flights from Singapore to Hong Kong any time soon.
The new A380 plane developed by AirBus has a lot of space, so airlines can kit it out however they like. Emirates Airlines decided to include a shower on the plane that first class passengers can use. However, carrying around all that water isn't so easy when you're on a plane and it has to be restricted to 50 gallons. So each passenger only get a 5 minute shower before an alarm sounds to remind them that time is almost up. It hardly sounds enjoyable, and if you're flying first class then you probably have a beautiful hotel room waiting for you at the other end so there is no reason to think that the presence of a shower will encourage anyone consider long flights from Manchester to Bangkok to fly with an airline that has showers on board.
But I think it's a good idea to constantly attempt to advance the customer service on airplanes and see exactly what the customer wants. I certainly wouldn't want to use a shower room after 4 sweaty businessmen, but I think it's a nice idea and something that could one day becoming industry standard on some flights, especially the long haul ones. Probably shouldn't expect to see showers on shorter flights from Minneapolis to Calgary however.