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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

Yup... I still don't understand why people decide to not put on their seatbelt while being seated. It's not like you have a lot more freedom of movement without the seatbelt? And it might just save your life in events like this one.

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I've never seen turbulence like this. And until fairly recently I didn't know it was really possible.

So it's a bit like "why don't people wear a welding mask while cooking?" It was never even a risk that I had considered before.

> So it's a bit like "why don't people wear a welding mask while cooking?"

Your kitchen does not have staff telling you to make sure you are wearing a welding mask. It may also lack appropriate indicator lamps that tell you when it is a good time to wear your welding mask. It is also not standard practice in all kitchens.

It’s actually not like airplane seatbelts at all, where they are ubiquitous and the risks of not wearing them are fairly well-documented.

> Your kitchen does not have staff telling you to make sure you are wearing a welding mask.

The advice to wear your seat belt throughout the flight are hardly clear and emphatic. They often make it sound like something they have to say to cover their asses. There's certainly no clear comms around the risk of death and serious injury.

I have no idea in this case whether the indicators went on in time but I obviously wasn't arguing in favour of ignoring those.

> the risks of not wearing them are fairly well-documented.

Where? Where would I have seen this documentation? I'm 53 and I have no recollection of stumbling across it.

(also - please reconsider your tone next time. It feels like you're trying to get me riled up)

Yes, they say it to cover their asses -- for the very very rare occasion when an unbelted passenger ends up stuffed into the overhead lighting panel or carry-on baggage compartments. :)

Seat belts in cars also contain several CYA-grade chimes and buzzers. The owner manual may mention risk of injury or death. Likely an airline's contract of carriage contains the same. I suspect both are read as often and as eagerly by their users.

I think the multiple "off tone" messages you're getting are in response to your use of ignorance as a defense for ignoring airplane crew instructions.

> [..] in response to your use of ignorance as a defense for ignoring airplane crew instructions.

Unless I come from an alternate universe - most people wear their seatbelt during take-off and landing and when the seatbelt light comes on.

I wear mine through most of the flight but I only started doing this fairly recently because I learned more about turbulence.

I'm not defending ignorance at all. I'm simply describing how poorly the risks are communicated and the reality that most people I've observed don't wear seatbelts for the entire duration of a flight unless the warning light comes on.

Nearly every flight they state that you should keep your seatbelt buckled at all times. If someone decides that they don't need to do that, it is because of their willful ignorance, sorry.

If they spent the time to describe all of the rare-yet-possible ways a person could die on an airliner, the thing would never leave the gate.

At some level, take their mandated-by-regulations word for it? -- these regs are written in blood, and they say to buckle your belt, not only when the sign is lighted, but also any time when seated at your seat.

Boeing has done a good job of reminding us of some non-turbulence reasons to buckle up. You might also get sucked out of an unsecured exit door plug on a 737. :) I haven't heard that one mentioned in a safety brief yet.

In the pilot circles I frequent, the joke about seatbelts is that it helps accident investigators more easily count the deceased among the wreckage. So there's some YOLO fuel for your next trip. This was a freak occurrence. It's sad and it sucks. The injuries to passengers were likely preventable -- less so the cabin crew. New word is that the fatality was a cardiac event -- no belt buckle helps anyone there.

People who follow all safety instructions endure fewer light injuries, severe injuries and fatalities. Pilots who joke about seatbelts are just an example of professionals being hilariously wrong (or sardonic) about a topic adjacent to their expertise. Or they were just joking about their usefullness in an uncontrolled crash landing, which is extremely rare.

In this case, a seat belt would have likely saved the person - heavily injuring yourself is quite traumatic (tautologically) which increases the risk of cardiac events. In any case, injuries due to turbulence are extremely common as far as injuries in airliners go.

I think maybe you come from an alternate universe. It’s been standard procedure for at least 3 decades to wear your seatbelt, even if loosely, all the time you’re on a plane, apart from when going to the loo or otherwise moving around.

I mean, I don’t really know how to say it without sounding like a git. This is simply what you do. What “everyone” does, for a loose definition of everyone. The “everyone” that wears seatbelts in a car, for example.

Genuine question: you know you should wear seatbelts if traveling in the rear seats of a car as well, yes ?

As mentioned elsewhere I have generally worn a seatbelt on planes for several years. And I think other people should.

And I religiously wear one in a car - just like any sane person.

I'm really sorry not to be the strawman that people in this thread seem to be craving.

> The advice to wear your seat belt throughout the flight are hardly clear

> Where? Where would I have seen this documentation? I'm 53 and I have no recollection of stumbling across it.

Besides the bright "buckle your belt" sign in front of you and the little leaflet that says "buckle your belt" at arms reach ?

https://www.travelandleisure.com/thmb/K-qKcdwWTPYlcarQsYPkR3...

You mean the seatbelt light that is sometimes on but mostly off?

There's some weird disconnect in this thread. People seem to be completely misinterpreting me at every step.

I agree with this. The seatbelt light is as anachronistic as the no-smoking light. They should just keep it on at all times. People obviously are still incorrectly interpreting "seatbelt light off" as "I should take my seatbelt off now."

The seatbelt sign tells you whether or not you are allowed to get up and move around. Unlike the no-smoking light it has actual informational content.

And, frankly, the simple existence of turbulence?

It’s not like the pilots can see a giant messy region of air up ahead. Sometimes they’ll know the flight overall will be rough and can warn you but generally most times they tell you to fasten your seat belts some turbulence has already happened.

A plane the other day dove suddenly out of nowhere. Less recently a door plug blew off a plane and nobody was sucked out thanks to seatbelts. Before that, a flight departing Hawaii fell a few hundred feet without warning shortly after takeoff. These all happened very publicly and with widespread media coverage.

Frankly, if you fly a few times a year and never wear your belt you’ll probably be fine. But it takes zero effort and doesn’t need to be strapped particularly tight to be effective. There’s essentially zero reason not to wear it and it can save your life.

Sometimes you just have to use a little of your own intelligence.

> The advice to wear your seat belt throughout the flight are hardly clear and emphatic. They often make it sound like something they have to say to cover their asses. There's certainly no clear comms around the risk of death and serious injury.

I can't remember the last time I was on a plane where they didn't recommend keeping a seatbelt on at all times.

Here is the BA brief saying to do just that time 1:55: https://youtu.be/gBGbDQbwzWU?si=5KS4LTEcDmtQKJH_

Here is the United one where they mention it at 0:30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2LSKVAH4WA

I can't imagine anything more clear than starting the seatbelt briefing: "It is important to have your safety belt on at all times"

They end it with: "In case of unexpected turbulence keep your seatbelt fastened, even when the seatbelt sign is off."

Its literally the first and last things that United tells you about your seatbelt.

People are constantly bombarded with seemingly unnecessary warnings. I frequently assume that these warnings are to insulate a company from legal trouble and not really to protect me. This might be an American perspective.

See: many airlines that still warn to put your phones in airplane mode, despite that being known nonsense for decades

It may still be a good idea because of battery but basically no one cares. Contra early days of smartphones when there near altercations with passengers responding to one last email after the doors closed.

It's not "known nonsense", but not for the reason you think. There's a small risk of your phone connecting to some random carrier located in whatever country you're currently flying over. For some smaller / third-world countries, this can be quite expensive, cents-per-megabyte isn't unheard of.

Every time this is brought up people come out of the woodworks with post-hoc rationale for this rule that has no basis in historical fact. This comment is good example.

Why would the FAA and other aviation regulatory agencies care about your phone bill?

It's not the reason the rule was implemented, it's not something the FAA cares about, but this doesn't change the fact that it's still a good idea in some cases, rule or no rule.

By that logic, many more things ought to be declared illegal by completely unrelated regulatory bodies. It would be a bit like the FDA banning gambling, or the SEC reinstating prohibition.

I completely agree on GPs statement being absurd post-hoc rationale, but interestingly, this rule is actually coming from the FCC, not the FAA [1], with the FAA only indicating support for it [2].

The motivation is supposedly cellphones at high altitudes interfering with far-away cell towers that are reusing the same frequency at a distance that would normally make interference very unlikely, given the radio horizon and everything.

I highly doubt that that would still be an issue modern networks couldn't handle (also given that most other countries don't have a corresponding law on their books, as far as I know), yet here we are.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/22.925

[2] https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

If that were the motivation, airlines should also display a "no credit cards" icon to protect you from overspending on the in-flight drinks service.

> cents-per-megabyte isn't unheard of.

If only! Double-digit dollars per 100 kilobyte aren't unheard of.

Here’s another American perspective: there are tons of videos of crazy turbulence tossing people around the cabin. I don’t want to get tossed around.

Warning fatigue is a real concern, and requiring people to watch videos on the internet should not be a prerequisite for adequate safety.

I've definitely noticed a proliferation of warning notices and signs in the US (and I don't just mean the Californian chemical hazard warnings in the most bizarre/unavoidable locations like a jet bridge), with the really important ones usually reiterated by a human standing next to them, continuously shouting the same instruction, apparently because people don't seem to take them seriously otherwise.

What is a "jet bridge"?

It's the enclosed, moveable walkway you go through between the airport gate and the plane.

It’s always been an American impulse to resist authority and think for yourself. That is generally admirable. Then at some point the “think for yourself” part got tossed out, and people disobey instructions for the sake of it.

It’s not that hard to follow instructions. There aren’t that many, and almost all flights have the exact same ones. If you don’t want to learn about getting tossed around like a rag doll at 40k feet that’s fine, just do what the crew tells you to do and you’ll be ok.

Something interesting I’ve seen on my recent domestic United flight, which I don’t think I’ve seen before. While the flight safety video was being played, a male flight attendant was walking through the cabin and actively telling people with headphones on (connected to their own device), to take them off and listen to the safety video. It wasn’t a recommendation though, he would wait until the person complied and would then continue down the aisle.

I didn’t have any headphones on. At first it felt a little bit overboard, but with events like this turbulence happening, I can see the need for it.

Guessing you are on the younger side. People my age know to wear the seat belt due to watching coverage of aloha flight 243 in 1988.

No. I'm 53 and I didn't watch anything about that flight. I wasn't watching much TV at that stage of my life.

A better analogy is probably having a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.

(Because instead of implying that the safety device is absurd, it implies that some people ignore the obvious)

Do you fly over the tropics? To me it's not so uncommon to experience heavier turbulence when crossing the equator to the tropic of Capricorn, haven't experienced turbulence bad enough to see people pushed straight through the cover of the oxygen masks but I've been in a couple of flights where I experienced big drops in a split second, thankfully never seen anyone badly injured just some poor soggy bastard that was thrown around in the bathroom and people hitting their heads on the overhead bins.

I just always wear my seatbelt per the flight attendants' instructions, "keep your seatbelts fastened while seated" is a recommendation in every flight I've ever taken in my life.

i do in fact wear safety glasses when frying stuff and oil is splattering but you're right that most don't

Pro tip: air travel “rules” are written in blood. There’s (usually) a reason rules exist.

It’s more like keeping a fire extinguisher in your kitchen. Some people may never need it, but grease fires happen often enough to plan for it.

A fire blanket may be easier for the kitchen

When you're cooking, you're not thousands of feet in the air in tight quarters traveling hundreds of miles per hour through the atmosphere in a however many ton vessel filled with flammable fuel.

What's not to understand about this? Airplanes are just super f'in safe and most people just think that nothing will ever happen to them, because rarely anything happens. Things do happen, but walking around the plane is cooler

People aren't killed on airline flight very often. Usually no more than once.

> Usually

If you have any stories about people that died on an airplane more than once, do tell :)

I think that was humour, but I could see someone having multiple heart attacks perhaps- and being technically dead, coming back with … encouragement given by CPR, and then sadly dying from a second heart attack/stroke/stoved-in-ribs…

Well, in the end darwinism still works, even tho we try very hard to fight against it.

Same in buses, every now and then you have deadly accidents, most deaths are due to people not using the belts and getting slammed around. It's one of the most easily avoidable death

Look at that one for example, the few people who had belt will most likely be fine, on the other hand people without belts got thrown around like ragdolls and many died: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldfgEJpIgKM&rco=1

Lots of buses don't have belts for passengers. I don't recall ever seeing a school bus with belts for the kids, nor belts on rny city bus.

In East Asia bus systems are much better than they are in most other countries. Buses travel everywhere and if they enter highways they usually have seatbelts. But people still just avoid them because there are a lot of "don't follow safety" social hivemind ideas.

I think it's something to do with being rebellious. Of course at work they do what they're told while building wealth for someone else. But something that really only benefits them... Nah. I've run into a lot of people like this, sadly.

Don’t tell me what to do!

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