I’ve often wonder why in the heck flight attendants give instructions on how to buckle a seat belt before every single flight. The doomed plane that caused it to all come about has finally been found way below in the oceans deep.
One of the reasons that we brief passengers on the use of seatbelts is that the operation of the buckle type (which used to be standard in cars decades ago) is very different from the push-button types that folks are accustomed to now. When stressed, humans resort to the most familiar behaviors, and I’m told (though I don’t have direct evidence for this) that folks’ remains have sometimes been found in the wreckage of aircraft with their hands on their seatbelt fittings in a position suggesting that they were trying to undo the belt as if it were a modern car type, and that the autopsy suggested they died after impact in a post-crash fire.
Not sure I buy this. The end of a long flight is the most stressful for me while waiting to disembark. And by this reckoning, many fools should be stuck in their seats trying to figure out those tricky buckles. Instead they are constantly jumping into the aisle and dropping luggage on peoples heads.
Yep, Simons post had me scratching head. I’ve seen about every type of f*cktardery one can imagine while flying. People couldn’t figure out the arm rests, the tables in front of them, the overhead lights, the air vents, the tv screens, the numbering of rows or how they were lettered, how to open or close a window shade, how to get into the bathroom, how to flush the toilet once there & how to open it back up to exit. On second thought, since buckling the seat belt is the only thing they teach us & it’s the only thing everyone knows how to do, maybe the pre-flight seat belt speech is important? Perhaps if they didn’t give the speech the flight attendants would have to make a pass at the end of flights free’ing a quarter of all the passengers from their seats?
I think we’re working on different grades of stress. A plane sinking, or on fire, is perhaps a bit more stressful than “bloody hell will these idiots ever get their act together”. But to the point you raise, this is perhaps why some people seem incapable of working out how to get off the bird in a timely fashion. That, or perhaps most people are just stupid and/or oblivious of others and the simple notion of efficiency.
Flying on US carriers and the international budget carriers is so painful now most people come on board hating the experience they are about to undergo. My theory is they are torturing people in order to force them to buy upgraded seats to make the trip tolerable. As most of my travel now is international I avoid the US carriers and when I have to fly for more than 4 hours in the US I spring for premium economy or better so they have won.
Presently I see no need for instructions on how to unfasten a seat belt as most do that at the first opportunity for escape.
This wouldn’t surprise me. The airlines hire groups of professional idiots to terrorize people who can afford economy plus & business class to set up there. This is more pleasant to believe compared to accepting the fact so many of us are so horrible & stupid.
The last first class travel in the US, and further, is by train. Take it when you can!
The bigger lesson is to unfasten the seat belt immediately.
Those people were scared of the water, stayed strapped in their seats, and drowned.
This guy might disagree with that advice…
was he lighting a smoke? That’d be rough, cat (clear air turbulence) is reason enough to stay belted in.
An organization I am associated with, recently brought a new-hire down from the Northwest Territory to southern Canada. He arrived with the most unexpected logistical problems. He did not have a bank account, or a credit card, or a single piece of identification. He had never rented a car or stayed in a hotel. I would not be surprised if he didn’t know how to fasten a seat belt in an airliner (at least, not until he took the trip south). It would be an awful tragedy if he were to come to grief on that account.
You might be right? A few years ago I was taking a certification class on a diesel engine in the US. On day 3 the instructor had a beaker of diesel fuel & was discussing different cetane numbers & specific gravities. I could tell the guy in front of me from Saudia Arabia was lost. When the instructor took a pause to do something I whispered up to the Saudi that the purple stuff in the beaker was diesel fuel. Sure enough, he had no clue what it was before me telling him & didn’t know we use purple diesel in the US. As soon as the instructor started back up the Saudis first question was to confirm we had been talking about diesel fuel for the last 10 minutes. The instructor said he had been teaching for 20 years, to mostly Americans but many international students as well & it never occurred to him to start off by explaining the purple juice looking stuff was actually US dyed diesel fuel.
Same topic but other, similar incidents and a lttile more in depth.
I was in an emergency landing when I was 11. Fortunately we had several hours to prepare as we had to dump fuel etc. To this day I know how to open a Boeing door. And when they say make sure your seatbelt is fastened as part of the briefing I check. I know where the nearest exit is. Finally, I pay attention to the flight attendants doing briefing because it’s the polite thing to do.
Thank you for saying, “ONE of the reasons . . .” Because you obviously understand that there are many. When the Hudson River ditcher made its pilot famous, some fucking idiot passenger who doesn’t listen to safety briefings and never reviews the safety pamphlet, opened one of the aft doors. Had he paid attention, and familiarized himself with the information presented, he would have known that the aft doors on this particular aircraft submerge when the ship lands in the water. In the case of another infamous ditching - alongside a beach, a tropical resort - numerous shit-for-brains passengers, scoffing, and too arrogant to listen to the briefing or read the pamphlet, inflated their life vests before they could leave the plane. Thereby, their fuck-headed action resulted directly in the deaths of many of their fellow travellers. SO, LISTEN TO THE BRIEFING! READ THE GODDAMMED PAMPHLET! COUNT (YOU STUPID C_UNT) THE NUMBER OF ROWS FROM YOUR SEAT TO THE ESCAPE HATCHES. AND TAKE NOTICE OF WHICH ESCAPE HATCHES ARE AVAILABLE WHEN THE PLANE IS IN THE WATER! Oh, and don’t joke about the seat cushion as a flotation device. Some aircraft have inflatable life-vests, some don’t, some provide a seat cushion (good luck), some have life rafts, some don’t. Some have inflatable slides, some don’t, some of the inflatable slides double as rafts, some don’t. Everyone who ignores the safety briefings is not only a fucking jackass, he endangers his fellow passengers. Don’t be a jackass. Because if any loved one of mine ever comes to grief because some fucking idiot, scoffing at the safety briefing, inflates his life-vest before leaving the ditched plane, or blocks the escape hatch, or opens an escape which is underwater, I AM COMING AFTER YOU!