EightBlack.

Ok, I might be missing the point entirely. I jumped onboard a Singapore Airlines flight to head to the US today (I wish all airlines were like SQ).

Anyway, the new seat belts are fitted with would you believe small airbags (I kid you not).

What the freaking hell are we supposed to do with these?

Now, I’d like to think I know a bit about flying, gravity and the earths surface. Besides having flown over 2 million miles, I’ve done 50 hours in a helicopter as a student pilot (ok, ok, I’ll try and get my licence before they invent another form of flying or my kids are too old).

But just what is the point of airbags fitted to a seat belt?

Besides being confusing to put on, it feels like you’re wearing one of those fat pouches or pregnancy bellies. I have a hard enough time keeping my weight off without an airline reminding me that now I’m 40, being fat is just one of those things I’m supposed to live with.

And just what is it supposed to do in an emergency?

I can tell you one thing. If the cabin loses pressure, or a wing falls off, or the back half of the plane bursts into flames - then I wont be worrying about putting on a life jacket, waiting for the masks to drop from the ceiling or anything else. And I certainly wont feel better as we’re reaching terminal velocity in a 200 tonne plane, with 170 tonnes of fuel onboard, calm in the knowledge that “oh, its ok, my seatbelt has an airbag”

Screw that for a joke.

Nope, I’ll be grabbing the nearest female crew member or passenger and having my way with her. I wont even bother doing a Ralph Fiennes and ask the chosen female to accompany me to the bathroom.

Listen, if you’re in an aircraft and it all goes tits up - airbags, oxygen masks and life jackets will be about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

If an emergency happens aboard your next flight, my advice to you is to finish your drink and the movie your watching, write your name on the seat your sitting on and then put your head between your legs and kiss your arsehole goodbye.

The only reason they ask you to put life jackets on (according to Billy Connolly) as you hurtle towards the water, is it makes it easier for rescue crews to collect the bodies.

If your number is up in an aircraft, you may as well die happy.

And why do they lie to you?

“Ladies and Gentleman, in the highly unlikely event of a water landing, please dont panic. Pull the life vest from its pouch, (if it hasn’t been stolen by a backpacker), place the jacket over your head, tie the straps in front of you and when you calmly and gracefully exit the aircraft, simply pull either red cord and wait for the jacket to inflate”

As if.

The only reason they dont ask you to try and inflate the jackets before you exit the burning ruins, is that, in all likelihood, the small gas cartridges that detonate the inflation mechanism will have been pinched when they last had the aircraft serviced in a 3rd world country and they dont want you finding this out in the last precious moments of your life.

Do you realise that to date, no commercial aircraft has ever made a successful water landing.

And the ones that do “land” on water are taught a friggin good lesson in physics, tend to break into a million pieces and burst into flames.

Nope, not me.

There’ll be 352 passengers screaming their heads off, getting a real time demonstration of what 8G feels like, unable to think because they’ll be blacking out and there I’ll be, bottle of chardonnay in one hand, Singapore Girl in the other other, crawling towards the bathroom, shouting to everyone to get out of my way.

Ok, maybe I’ll forget the bottle.

Sometimes, in our effort to outdo the competition, we focus on the things that we shouldn’t.

In this case, seat belt airbags onboard Singapore Airlines latest 777-300ER aircraft is just over the top. More importantly, it reminds us of the very things that we shouldn’t be thinking about when we travel by plane.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 8:34 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.