to find it rude when people ignore the safety talk on an airplane?

[Beograde]

I find it rude when the aircrew ask us to for just a few minutes attention before we take off, and so many people keep on reading, etc? I know most people have flown a lot of times before, and maybe won't learnt something, but I think we're only being asked for a couple of minutes attention or so, and it just seems rude and disrespectful.

AIBU?

[squoosh]

Issy I'm obsessive about seat belts in taxis too. I think that'll stand me in better stead than watching every airline safety demo.

[Backinthebox]

Charliefarlie - really? As an airline pilot we spend days every year training to make sure that if we do find ourselves in a difficult situation we stand as good a chance as possible. You might mock the fact that we spend hours every year practicing things like what to do if all our engines stop, or the most effective way to ditch an aircraft, or what to do if the other pilot dies, or if part of the aircraft falls off. I don't think it it futile. I can think of numerous occasions when the actions of one or more crew members have saved lives in situations you would write off as unsurvivable.

It IS rude when staff are placed there for your benefit and yet people continue to talk over them or put their newspapers up and carry on reading. It's less than 4 minutes of your time, and it's common courtesy to at least look as though you are paying attention, even if you are daydreaming.

During our annual training we analyse numerous accidents, both fatal crashes and accidents where the outcome was better. We try to learn from other people's mistakes, and improve our own abilities, and it does mean that we are exposed to all the gory details of major incidents. We also spend a lot of time realising that our actions can save people or kill them. Many crashes are survivable:

Fuel froze and both engines stopped.

Pilots shut down the wrong engine.

Flew into a flock of geese and landed on water.

Airport landing lights failed causing crash landing.

Another crash landing.

I'd also just like to dispel a few myths:

You don't brace to save your dental records, you do it because research and evidence for post-crash analysis has shown it to be effective in helping survival.

You are briefed on life vest use even if you are flying over land because it is a legal requirement. This flight wasn't planning on going over water, but that's the way the hijackers wanted to go. So many passengers survived the ditching but drowned because they didn't listen to safety instructions given to them by the crew.

You're not definitely going to survive if you sit at the back. Nor are you definitely going to die if you sit at the front. Seat 7A does not always end up being catapulted out of the side, and the pilots often survive too.


The NTSB have run studies into how many people survive aircraft crashes - 56% survive. A chap from the FAA reckons that "The flying public thinks if you're in an accident, you're going to die. So you don't need to know what to do, and don't pay attention to the briefing or read the safety card," Mr. Palmerton says. "Nothing could be further from the truth." It's worth watching, even out of the corner of your eye. Every airline kits it's aircraft out slightly differently, and even knowing that you are flying on a, say, Boeing 737 doesn't clear things up, unless you are familiar with all of it's different variants.

Fwiw, I would always watch the safety brief, but hey, what do I know!

[Beograde]

BackintheBox, thanks, that's really interesting.

It feels that I'm right, it is rude to ignore the safety briefing. The attendants find it rude, even if you fly a lot, it's done for a reason. It seems a lot of people do behave rudely, but don't realise they are doing so.

[Pseudonym99]

Its aeroplane, not airplane!

[squoosh]

Leslie Nielsen would beg to differ!

[squoosh]

I'll continue with my devil may care attitude and read my book through the safety chat. Why would anyone care that other people weren't listening??

[LineRunner]

I'm with BackInTheBox. I hate flying, and I'm the attentive one.

But I mostly hate all this 'Too cool to be arsed to understand not to inflate my life vest inside the aircraft thus blocking the exit and killing 50% of the survivors' attitude.

[LineRunner]

Fear, squoosh, raw fear.

[StillSquiffy]

Having done circa 100 flights a year for 15 years, I most certainly do not intend to tune in. In those 15 years, the only advice that changed was that you don't interlock your fingers anymore in the brace position. That's it.

And I've always clocked where the exits are before I've taken my seat, and worked out the best exit.

Virgin used to be quite good at changing their safety demonstration video, but even they have had the same one for the last, what, 7 years at least? Saying that, having an amusing video does seem to get more of a tune-in from the passengers, so that's probably the way to go.

Having lived and worked 'off the beaten track' no safety advice is better than 'fly BA or Lufthansa at every opportunity'

[Backinthebox]

Why would anyone care that other people weren't listening??

Because it's been proven that people who listen, even if they have heard the briefing a squillion times before, are more likely to do the right things to survive where there is the possibility of survival, perhaps? It's just being in the right mindset that often counts in these situations. Survivors testimonials and detailed scrutiny of crashes have shown that. And if I'm sitting next to a person who isn't in the right frame of mind to survive? Should I risk my life to try and help save yours? I'm trained to do it, and would find it difficult not to, even in the face of danger.

It's like people who refuse to wear a seatbelt and saying 'well, it's only me who'll die in a crash - why should anyone else be bothered?' But it's not - it's been proven that a person unrestrained in a car is a danger to all the occupants. It's not cool to not wear a seat belt. I don't get why there is such a big deal about listening to a spiel which is designed with your best interest in mind! It's boring, I know - I listen to it up to 4 times a day when I'm at work! But it's only 4 minutes of your day, and lets face it, if you're listening to a safety briefing you are probably strapped in a seat in a metal tube for the next few hours - it's hardly going to kill you to listen to it.

As a final word - it is a legal requirement to announce during the safety briefing if anything is different about the safety equipment or doors on the aircraft on a given flight. Such as an emergency door not working. It doesn't matter then if you've counted your rows back to the door behind you if it doesn't work!

[SoleSource]

I have been chuckling to myself on and off tiday about ninah's post about blowing the whistle in the middle of tbe Atlantic lol

[SoleSource]

TheC4 documentary The Plane Crash has haunred ne. Was it really necessary to show the graphic images of leg bones being briken under the seat ooohh arrrgh gross

[TallyLo]

Maybe if they delivered it Billy Connolly style more would listen:

In the highly unlikely event of power failure in all four engines then in all probability we'll go into the ground like a fucking dart. We'd be obliged if you'd wear your lifejacket. This will do you no good at all. However when archeologists find you in 200 years they'll think there was a river here.

[squoosh]

It's like people who refuse to wear a seatbelt and saying 'well, it's only me who'll die in a crash - why should anyone else be bothered?'

With all due respect I don't think the two are alike at all. I always wear a seatbelt when travelling by car, I always wear a seatbelt when travelling by plane, I've clocked where my nearest exit is I just do not need to listen to the same instructions with rapt attention every time I fly.

[Tee2072]

Also, how stupid do you have to be to not be able to figure out how to fasten the seatbelt? I find that part to be patronising.

[HazleNutt]

Tee - most people can figure out how to fasten, but I fly a lot and have seen many times people who did not pay attention and are struggling with unfastening, looking for release buttons to press.

[FairPhyllis]

You are not being unreasonable OP. And I'd say if there's any chance flight safety briefings can maximise survival in the event of a disaster they are worth doing.

Even in the very worst air disasters, there have often been survivors. Even in the Tenerife collision, which was the worst aviation incident in history, there were still about 60 survivors from the Pan Am aircraft including the pilots and flight engineer.

In air emergencies, people often don't react with panic as you'd expect them to - they often freeze until someone tells them what to do, or even die in situations they could have escaped from - which is why cabin crew are trained to shout positive commands the minute they are ordered to evacuate.

I'm guessing that there have been studies demonstrating that having seen a video cuts down people's reaction times for obeying the crew. All of the safety stuff on commercial aircraft now is backed up by an awful lot of empirical research on previous disasters and probably on simulations of emergencies too.

[NannyR]

I saw a documentary years ago which explained that in an emergency evacuation, with the smoke and darkness and general confusion, people lose vital seconds getting of the plane by trying to open the seat belt as if it were a car seatbelt, with the buckle at the side as that is more instinctive. I think that's why they show you how the seatbelt works - whether or not you'd remember it in an actual emergency is another thing, but at least they've covered themselves.

[FairPhyllis]

Why would anyone care that other people weren't listening?

Because if your reactions in an emergency - and human reactions to this kind of situation aren't brilliant anyway, as I said above - are even slightly off from not having watched the safety stuff then it slows down evacuation for everyone around you. E.g. it may take you longer to get out of your seat, open an emergency door, get a lifejacket on, or you may hesitate at the top of a slide. So crew might spend time shouting at you when they could be doing something else. You don't have long to get out if there is a risk of fire - maybe 90 seconds or less? - and there may be other complicating factors like not all exits being available.

[Gatorade]

I'm one who continues to read I'm afraid, I take in excess of 40 mid and long haul flights a year when I'm not on maternity leave, pretty much always BA and I know their safety video off by heart, I could type out the wording right now. I honestly think that if they changed the wording I would notice, despite reading at the time.

If however the video isn't working and the staff are having to manually do the presentation I glance up out of courtesy.

[aurynne]

More people would pay attention if all companies did as AirNewZealand does:

http://www.youtube.com/user/airnewzealand/featured?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc

[Backinthebox]

how stupid do you have to be to not be able to figure out how to fasten the seatbelt?

Hazelnutt has it in a nutshell (ba-dum-tish!) Repeated evidence has shown time and time again that in a panic people revert to a procedure that is so ingrained in their brain that they reach for it automatically - undoing a car seat belt. It's a fact.

As I said before, every single incident on an aircraft is micro-analysed. Even seemingly little things, things that passengers probably wouldn't even notice. When larger incidents and accidents occur, passengers' reactions are also scrutinised, and sometimes result in changes to the way things are done.

Passengers are the hardest things about passenger aviation - only a couple of weeks ago an aircraft carried out a rejected take off and full emergency evacuation at Glasgow. There were only minor injuries, all passengers were evacuated in a short space of time, and the evacuation was carried out correctly. A success, you might think? (When the A380 test evacuation was carried out, where all passengers are required to be evacuated in less than 90 seconds, it was considered to be a success as only 33 volunteers were injured, one with a broken leg.)

There are passengers suing the airline now, because they were injured, because the cabin crew were aggressive and yelled at them to jump, and were just shoving people out of the door without giving people enough time to do it 'properly.' There is actually a video on Youtube where a passenger is standing at the bottom of the slide telling people to 'take their time.' In an emergency you don't have time.

I really do appreciate that many people are frequent flyers. But the safety briefing is there to inform AND reinforce, and to tell you about changes to the aircraft on the day, such as doors that aren't working.

And regardless of the above, it is still just plain rude to blank someone who is speaking to you. All the people who refuse to pay attention have gone on about how they know it all already, but no one has admitted that they have no problem being rude to a person just doing their job.

[Backinthebox]

The legal requirements of the safety briefing video and the approval process it has to go through mean that it is costly and time consuming to change it. There are so many things that must be included in the briefing that there is not really much space to change things about a bit to make it more 'fun.' It's a boring and necessary part of the flight.

[MustTidyPlayroom]

Having been on a plane that needed to do an emergency stop just prior to take-off the brace position wasn't an option - we were all thrown into by the braking force (only a few people had bags land on their heads).

The most disturbing thing was the captain saying something along the lines of...

"apologies for that Passengers, a warning light was lit and as I didn't know what it meant, I decided it was best to find out on the ground rather than in the air.

Anyway as the light has gone out now I'll try and take-off again..."

Thankfully we got to our destination in one piece!

[Backinthebox]

Anyway - this popped into my in-tray this morning. Although they are costly to make, every so often an airline makes a new safety video that's well worth watching. You'll notice nearly all the words are exactly the same as the standard version, but it's somehow just a lot less boring!