In George’s Point of View

When I get on a plane, I plan on being safe. I don’t fly “unsafe” airways.

If I didn’t believe I was going to be safe on a plane, I wouldn’t get on it. It should go without saying. Most people probably feel that way, except for the ones stuck in countries whose airlines are on the EU banned list.

But apparently, British Airways isn’t so confident. They are offering a four hour class in how to crash. That is, they are going to charge passengers to teach them how they want passengers to behave in a crash, to increase their likelihood of survival.

Excuse me? This is not like a Drunk Driving class where the driver, the one in control of the vehicle, is being taught something. These are passengers, stuck in a flying sardine can, strapped into their seats. There’s not a whole lot passengers can do but sit there. Beyond that little sideshow performance by the attendants before every flight, other than avoiding hysteria, what else can passengers do? Flap their wings?

I am on the fence about whether or not such a course is a good idea. On one hand, I can picture a poll taken by airline patrons who have written in their own question, asking what to do in case of a crash.

Pray.

Maybe flight attendants just get tired of answering that question, “What can we really do to survive, if we crash?” They probably hear it frequently. Maybe someone asked Sully, and Sully said, “Be calm.”

In most cases who survives a plane crash has a lot to do with age. When there is one single survivor, it is usually a child, and I don’t think there’s anything that a class offered by British Airways can teach to make anyone younger. There are seats that may be marginally safer depending on how the plane crashes, but everyone can’t sit in them. That would cause a plane crash. (It reminds me of a recent crash of a plane where some smuggled creatures escaped their confines, scared everyone from one side of a small plane to the other, and of course, it got off balance and crashed.)

I can also picture a boardroom with a bunch of accounting types trying to figure out new revenue streams. They ask themselves what do passengers want?

The answer? To get to their destination in one piece.

But they’re already selling them tickets. What else can they do to squeeze the market? I mean, what else can they do to make the passengers happy?

“Eureka!” one of them shouts, “Let’s offer plane crash safety classes.” Maybe this one means well at the time. Maybe when he suggests it, he thinks it should be free. Or maybe he is just hoping his shiftless out-of-work brother-in-law could get hired by British Airlines to teach the classes, so he’ll move out of the spare bedroom.

So in that imaginary planning meeting I referenced before, the British Airways guy with the calculator says “And charge them for it!”

Their documentation says that British Airways believes a class will “make passengers safer…by giving additional skills and information.”

Does this mean they are withholding information that would make passengers safer?

If there’s something new or special that should be taught about living through a flight, (people, consider that I am writing this article while ON a slow plane from China,) then this is something EVERY passenger must know, and it must be included in the price of the ticket.

The whole scheme of this class seems problematic to me. We passengers are already buying your tickets. Charging us to make us safer on your flight…that seems not only hypocritical, it seems like the ultimate in avariciousness.

What are you going to do next if a plane crashes? Make the people who didn’t take the class leave the plane last? Do they get to die first?

The announcement indicates that this program was developed for BP staff who regularly end up on EU banned list flights on planes that skydivers wouldn’t touch with a ten foot parachute. Maybe the class really just scares people off of those banned airlines, and onto British Airways planes, which are more expensive but a heck of a lot more likely to get you there intact than an airline that doesn’t pass the EU safety criteria.

Anyway, British Airways, if you’re listening, this is not just a product that you got stuck with to make some money from. This is something you should be offering to all your passengers, for free. Have some stars (Tom Cruise reprising his Top Gun role, Meg Ryan reprising her aerophobic character in French Kiss, or maybe the cast of that new Pan Am series.)

Record the class. Give it out as a DVD with the tickets. Sometimes you have to put away the calculator.

I should note at some point that every day there are dozens of small events that occur that we don’t talk about. For example, there was the event on the 7th when a 65 year old pilot beached his Cessna 310 (flying out of Monteray) in the ocean when he ran out of gas. He had notified authorities of his fuel situation, so the Coast Guard was on hand to rescue him…

Or the fiasco 22 year old Jason Laurence Delta University student (Cleveland Mississippi) survived when the 1972 Cessna 150 he was flying failed, and flipped during an emergency landing in a groove in a cotton field, rolling end over end.

Or the Piper PA-32 Saratoga went missing heading to Johnstown, Pa, and in which Michael Garrone of Allegheny Township, Pa., 52-year-old Chas Armitage Jr. of Parks Township, Pa., and his girlfriend, 49-year-old Laura Stettmier lost their lives when it crashed 12 miles southeast of the Grant County Airport in Petersburg.

Or the United Express flight from Chicago to Omaha which landed in Des Moines on Friday with an undesignated engine problem.

Or Thursday’s Pia birdstrike in Pakistan that ended with an engine shut down and a return to Islamabad.

Or the fatal crash thursday of an experimental Rand Robinson KR-2 which took off from Mountain Empire Airport and killed the pilot a mile north of the airport at 1:10 pm.

Or the experimental Quickie Q200 which crashed and burned when 60-year-old Gerald Brinkerhuff from Gobles was practicing touch and goes in Holland Michigan. Brinkerhuff did not survive.

Every day there are numerous events that happen, and sometimes there’s just not enough detail available, or sometimes conflicting accounts make it difficult to determine what happened.