Update: See this entry, which comments on this article.
Another thing airlines don’t want you to know: this is how your plane actually pulls away from the gate.
Over at the site for one of my favourite magazines, The Economist, they’ve got a more truthful version of the announcment that the chief flight attendant makes as your plane pulls away from the gate.
Here’s the first part:
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is. Please ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your seat back is upright and your tray-table is stowed. At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust.
The flight attendants are now pointing out the emergency exits. This is the part of the announcement that you might want to pay attention to. So stop your sudoku for a minute and listen: knowing in advance where the exits are makes a dramatic difference to your chances of survival if we have to evacuate the aircraft. Also, please keep your seat belt fastened when seated, even if the seat-belt light is not illuminated. This is to protect you from the risk of clear-air turbulence, a rare but extremely nasty form of disturbance that can cause severe injury. Imagine the heavy food trolleys jumping into the air and bashing into the overhead lockers, and you will have some idea of how nasty it can be. We don’t want to scare you. Still, keep that seat belt fastened all the same.
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.
The full announcement is here. Maybe you shouldn’t read it if flying gives you the willies and you’ll be boarding a plane soon.
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The part about not using cell phones in the article isn't quite right. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers did a study on real cross-country flights using a spectrum analyzer and found that the amount of power in critical bands was enough to potentially disrupt flight systems. It may be true that some airlines will eventually install base stations in aircraft, but in that case the power transmitted by the cell phones will be very low (the base station tells the mobiles how much power to use) and will not disrupt flight systems.
If you see someone using a cell phone in-flight, the right thing to do is to politely ask them to shut it off.
Actually Joey the author is completely mistaken about seating arrangements on modern military aircraft, and the folks at the Economist were clearly too lazy to even phone up their local airlift squadron and check the facts.
On airlifters such as the C-130 and C-17, their integral seating arrangement is sideways (on sidewall and centerline seating), not facing the rear ramp. If they are flying in a troop airdrop configuration then the seating is stowed completely and the troops sit on the aircraft floor. When using seating pallets, those seats will be installed facing the front of the aircraft.
Very rarely do strategic or tactical airlifters fly with rear-facing seats these days.