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F.Y.I.

Answering a Question About an Airport Bathroom

Q. On returning to Kennedy Airport from a trip abroad, I went through Terminal 4. There is something strange about the men’s rooms in that building. At the center of each urinal, toward the bottom, there is an image of a large black housefly. Is this someone’s idea of a joke? Please explain.

A. A sense of humor was undoubtedly involved, but those flies are there for a good reason.

First, some background. Terminal 4, which opened in 2001, was developed and is operated by JFKIAT, a subsidiary of Schiphol Group, which runs Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, a clean, passenger-friendly place.

Image

As for the Dutch, “they are frugal, and they are very — we would now say green-minded,” said Janice Holden, a vice president and spokeswoman for JFKIAT. “They came up with this theory that if you put a target in a urinal, men would automatically aim for it.” The purpose, she said in an interview, was to reduce spills and the odors, sticky floors, worries about slipping and frequent cleaning that came with them.

The flies, which were baked into the porcelain, proved irresistible. Studies found that mistakes in marksmanship dropped by 80 percent as men kept their minds on their work. At Kennedy, the flies are used in all nine men’s rooms in Terminal 4. The innovation, which began at Schiphol Airport, has spread elsewhere in Holland as well. In fact, urinal fly images — baked or painted on, or stuck on as decals — have been spotted around the world, including in Moscow and Singapore, according to an NPR segment by the science correspondent Robert Krulwich.

Terminal 4 at Kennedy is undergoing a $1.2 billion expansion, which is scheduled for completion next May. Urinal flies, however, are not planned for the new bathrooms. Asked why not, Ms. Holden said, “The ‘fly’ was a Schiphol initiative and not considered by the group who designed the new plans.”

E-mail: fyi@nytimes. com

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section MB, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Dutch Innovation. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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