Flight safety

Those who were amused by Tyler’s discussion of airline safety in the excellent film Fight Club may enjoy a leader article (what the Brits call an editorial) from this week’s Economist. It purports to be an accurate version of the spiel you get every time you board an aircraft. It confirms what I have already heard, read, and believed and I am pretty sure they did their homework. It is also fairly funny:

Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero. This aircraft is equipped with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides. We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is to enter the realm of science fiction.

Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft’s navigation systems. At least, that’s what you’ve always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn’t sound quite so good.

The bit about water landings is, of course, especially dire. Just think about what would happen when a huge jetliner landed on water. It would either stall before hitting the water and fall more or less straight downward, or plow at a rate above stall speed forward into the water, in which those huge jet engines would rapidly cause the plane to slow. Passengers would be thrown forward with enormous violence. Far better to have seats facing backwards like in military transport planes, but who wants to pay $1000 for a ticket and then be reminded that you may end your flight as part of a mile-long trail or debris or cloud of polluted seawater?

All that said, flying is still definitely the safest way to travel long distances, and considerably less risky than failing to exercise and maintain a healthy diet, in terms of the risk of getting killed.

PS. Please note that these pictures have nothing to do with the posts in which they are embedded. They are just nice portraits from CF2 that I wanted to include in the blog. The very best photos will appear on Photo.net once I get my lovely Mac back.

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here. View all posts by Milan