Next Off the Plane to Save Weight: Safety Equipment
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08.25.08
Jazz, Air Canada's discount airline spinoff, has pulled all the lifejackets out from under the seats to save about a pound per passenger and a bit of fuel. The regulations say that is OK if the plane stays within 50 miles of land, and they have adjusted a few routes accordingly. Instead of a lifejacket, passengers will grab a seat cushion.
Now my reaction may be emotional; while there have been a few cases where life jackets have saved lives in a crash, there aren't many. (See wikipedia here). In 2002 the Economist claimed that "No large airliner has ever made an emergency landing on water...So the life jackets ... have little purpose other than to make passengers feel better."
However I suspect that if a plane did ditch in cold water that my chances of survival would be a lot better with lifejacket that held my head up then they would be clinging onto a cushion.
Save fuel by cutting back on peanuts and newspapers, but safety equipment? Another good reason to take the train. ::The Star
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Maybe some of the smart designers that are often touted on treehugger can design a seat cushion that transforms into a real and usable lifejacket.
Planes that don't fly over large bodies of water have been doing this for a very long time - that I know of personally well over 20 years. This isn't remotely new or novel behaviour, and I have regularly flown in planes that offer seat cushions over life jackets.
This is basically just conceding that if the plane goes down its game over.... which is more or less true.
At least this will solve the problem of people inflating their vests prior to exiting the plane...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961
The Economist article in question, which I read at the time on an airplane, said that no widebody aircraft had ever landed on water without breaking up, plenty have gone into the drink. The piece was also satire.
Totally fine with removing the life jackets, even on a transpac flight. If they really want to start making money though, they need to base fares on the combined weight of the passenger and their bags. Why should my 30 pound 3 year old subsidize the ticket price of someone who weighs 10 times as much? Weight=fuel.
Actually if you go down over water it's worse than going down over land.
My wife's uncle is plane crash investigator for the federal government. He explained to me once that a plane crashing into water is worse, when the plane hits the water the water seeps into all the stress fractures and cracks on impact as the nose is crumpling. Once the water enters these cracks the pressure from the impact and the water pressure cause the plane to explode into a number of pieces.
On the other hand you're far more likely to have sections of the cabin remain together when hitting the ground.
In 2002 the Economist claimed that "No large airliner has ever made an emergency landing on water...So the life jackets ... have little purpose other than to make passengers feel better."
Thats not true, there's even videos of planes going down in the sea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqV1byLOmNc
John-
That video you posted is the aftermath of hijackers wrestling the pilots, not an attempt by actual pilots to ditch a plane. And look at the plane at the end- not exactly floating level on the water with its wings intact and people pushing off in the life rafts. There are very, very few situations when an airliner pilot would attempt to ditch in deep water rather than limp it back to the nearest airport. In fact, there are so few that commercial pilots don't bother training for "water landings."
Even if you're that one-in-ten-billion who ends up on board a successful water landing, you're more likely to be killed by the vest, because you didn't listen to the safety briefing and inflated it before you got off. It's there for show.
Why not instead set up a system where people are charged per ounce on what they packed? That'd disincentivize overpacking, saving more than just a few pounds.
I'm not a fan of flying anyways.