Slashdot Mirror
Flight Attendants Want Stricter Gadget Rules Reinstated
stephendavion writes You might be super happy to toil away on your phone or tablet the entire time you're on a plane, but not everyone is pleased to see your face buried in your device during takeoff and landing. The Federal Aviation Administration's new, more relaxed rules on gadget use aren't sitting well with one group — flight attendants. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the nation's largest flight attendant union is now suing the FAA to have the ban on gadget use during takeoff and landing reinstated. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA argues that the change has caused many passengers to ignore flight attendants' emergency announcements, and that the new rules violate federal regulations requiring passengers to stow all items during takeoff and landing.
Typical of Air Canada, if you're not listening, they become surly... So they want you to listen. But you have to listen twice, both in english and in french... God help you if you should tune out while they're going through the whole spiel in a language you don't understand...
Westjet has a video for the french half and could seemingly care less if you're paying attention. The english half is occasionally made interesting with the injection of humor...
They are trying to defend their mostly useless jobs. When flights had things like meals and movies, there was a real need for some one to serve. Now they are trying to hold on to their role, should an emergency occur, in controlling the crowd and directing actions. I'm astonished that they even have waitresses on short flights at all. If it is less then 6 hours, your probably better served with having ground crew help every one get seated and deplane.
I flew recently, and the crew was saying how much they loved not having to fight everybody to turn off their devices.
Southwest might be a bit friendlier than most others, though.
They don't want people looking at their devices with their headphones in when the captain says "brace for impact" a moment before you're supposed to land normally. It's not that hard to just be ready for an important announcement before takeoff and landing. And they're right that you want everything stowed away for those two phases of the flight.
I'll take my chances that even if I did brace for impact it wouldn't make a significant difference in my survival or chance of injury. And whether I'm looking at my kindle, staring out the window, even staring right at the flight attendant in the jump seat, I don't think it's going to affect my reaction time at all. Even with headphones on I can hear cabin announcements (I sure wish I couldn't, so I could sleep while the captain points out that we're crossing over the Rocky Mountains).
I don't remember ever being asked to stow a book, and my kindle is smaller and lighter than most hardcover books (even many paperbacks). Besides, I've seen the overhead compartments come unlatched during severe turbulence, so in the event of a real crash, a loose kindle is the least of anyone's worries.
And they're right that you want everything stowed away for those two phases of the flight.
So talk to their boss. If an airline wants to allow/disallow certain things or require everything to be stowed, then
let the airline decide to do this. If the airline wants to sell flights where noone is allowed luggage, or where there
are no seats and it is standing room only, then let the airlines do this. The FAA should only be concerned with
the safety of the airplane and the safety of the pilot so that the airline can safely take off and land without hurting
anyone outside the airplane. If luggage isn't stored properly and falls on someone, that's the airline's problem.
It's no different than if someone slips and falls on ice at walmart, let the airlines decide what is needed to prevent
unnecessary lawsuits.
I don't give a fuck.
I fly 2h every monday and friday and still I'm most at risk during the 30min taxi trips homeairport. And if the taxi driver told me to store my phone is case of a much more probable accident, I'd give him the same answer.
And the taxi driver owns his vehicle. And he could be killed precisely by my phone.
So shut your dickhole about hypothetical airplane accidents and how many hoops we have to jump through to avoid dying in one.
The scaremongering got old a long while ago.
On one flight I was asked by a sky waitress to take off and stow my hat. My cloth hat.
Why? "Because in case of an accident it could come off my head and fly through the cabin like a missile." She said said that with a completely straight face while people around me were on their phones or reading hardcover books and one lady in the aisle across from me had her knitting needles out the entire flight take-off to landing.
and it takes me all of two seconds to remember where the exits are
Actually, this is the one important bit of the safety briefing. It's been shown multiple times that in an emergency situation we're surprisingly shit at figuring out where we should be going. Not only that, but one person trying to fight the flow and go to the wrong exit can fuck over many many other people. Just prompting people to look around and register in their brain "it's 3 rows behind me" is useful.
"During Pan Am’s heyday in the 1960s, there were strict requirements for stewardesses: They had to be at least 5-foot-2, weigh no more than 130 pounds, and retire by age 32. They couldn’t be married or have children, either. As a result, most women averaged just 18 months on the job."
No? Don't want to do that?
Remember the miracle on the Hudson? It was the flight attendants who made sure everyone was safe and made sure they evacuated in an orderly fashion. They were the last ones off the plane. THAT is why they are there and I for one am glad to see them.
Does the math work? How many lives per year would flight attendants have to save to justify the price?
There's just short of 10m flights per year in the US, and a US life is worth about $7m for prime-aged workers. If a flight costs an average of 10 flight attendant hours (I'm guessing that's low), that means we spend 100m flight attendant hours per year.
Starting pay for flight attendants is $16/hr. So that's 1.6 billion dollars per year, plus overhead, that we pay for flight attendants.
If safety is 50% of their job, and overhead is 50% of base pay, that means we're spending $1.2b per year on flight attendants for safety purposes.
At $7m per life, that means they have to provide safety benefits equal to saving 170 lives per year. In the US, we currently lose about 15.3 lives per year to air travel fatalities.
Just ballpark figures, but it feels like we're overpaying.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance