British Airways B789 smoke in cabin, phone stuck in seat
avherald.com
avherald.com
We need a word for uselessnessification. WTF are they afraid of, that they omitted the critical information from the announcement?
I had it happen to me once but as instructed didn’t move the seat (had to move to another one for landing as it was stuck in the lie flat position).
After landing the maintenance crew had to completely dismantle the back of the seat but they found the phone. The pilots and crew were obviously a bit annoyed as they couldn’t disembark the aircraft with me still on board. But much better result than having to declare PAN PAN.
How does that work on a completely full flight?
It would be helpful if the announcements eluded to this, as a pax I’m not going to want to bother anyone especially if i think it’s just another dumb pointless rule.
FAA rules are written in blood. They may be overbearing and often tedious, but they are far from dumb and pointless. Those rules are from other government agencies.
AFAIK it never did, but could have done.
The airline charges money to let you choose your seat, and obviously, no one had paid.
There is an FAA rule saying you have to listen to safety instructions from the flight crew, but apparently there is no rule saying that crew members can’t issue blatantly false “safety” orders to prop up the marketing department’s numbers.
The more airlines abuse this, the more people will assume that new FAA rules are also bullshit.
Not knowing why it's a rule, and being too self-righteous to look it up, doesn't make it "blatantly false".
But you also don't really want to mention fire as you're beginning a flight.
Even Qantas cut the scene in Rainman where Raymond histerically doesn't want to board an airplane since Qantas is the only carrier that never had a fatality.
The concern isn't really revenue loss.
> and noone freaks out,
Plenty of people freak out and create safety issues and distractions. Anything you say during the safety briefing, you're making a tradeoff between slightly preparing sane, attentive passengers better and increasing the worry of anxious passengers.
This isn’t hypothetical, they put this in the safety talk since it has happened and obviously by reports like this, continues to happen!
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/651/
They're devices that are highly valuable (both monetarily and how much hassle it would be to lose it due to all the 2FA tied to it) and indispensable for modern life. They're not just toys, "addiction machines", entertainment etc. - and even if they were, despite what some puritans think, there is nothing wrong with entertainment if you're sitting in a plane for hours.
Prohibiting phones on flights completely would likely be a great way to cut air travel in less than half, because it would become too much hassle to bother with for many.
Requiring them to be checked would result in massive theft, and while it would reduce the risk of fire, any fires that would happen would have a much higher risk of being catastrophic. There's a reason why power banks are required to be in the cabin.
I have never paid more than $250 for a phone, and I hope I never will.
> all the 2FA tied to it
It’s not the brightest idea to use phone for 2FA, precisely because it’s so easy to break or loose a phone. Fortunately, 2FA algorithms are open and there’re equivalent desktop apps.
But if I were to speculate, I mean performance shows have yonder bags today. They could be checked in with the rest of luggage in special boxes that you pick up at luggage claim.
They're banned in checked luggage, yes, but this would be packed by the airport authority into specialized luggage compartments.
What they don't want is people taking liquids that aren't designed for human consumption.
As for the phone battery issue, yeah it is a problem, I guess the only solution would be to forbid any kind of battery powered device.
I bet lots of folks won't be happy with such regulation.
It would take care of flights for business purposes and increase selling books though.
The liquid rules were introduced in 2006 in response to a foiled terrorist plot involving explosives in soft drink bottles. But if you have 1 litre of liquids in small bottles, can't you just combine them to end up with a bomb?
It's been a long time since I've been on a plane, but I do remember that the seats seem to obviously be optimised for weight savings, so minimising pinch points and/or guarding them is clearly not a priority.
That doesn't necessarily mean the finger would get stuck in that gap.
Pilot seats also move during flight because you get into and out of them. Crews change seats several times on a long flight to allow them to sleep while others are flying.