A display showing the ‘fasten your seatbelt’ sign and the ‘no smoking’ sign illuminated on board an aircraft.
Jeff Overs | BBC News & Current Affairs | Getty Images
You trudge down the aisle to your seat. You double- and triple-check that you’ve got arrived at the suitable row. You heave your luggage into the overhead bin and squeeze past your fellow passenger to settle into your seat.
Job done. Stress-filled boarding process complete. You zone out.
Never mind that flight attendants have begun their pre-flight safety demonstration, or that a video has begun to play informing you of the procedures in case of an emergency. You are superb. You’ve got seen this one before.
“The eye rate through the safety demos is incredibly low,” says Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents cabin crews at United, Alaska, Frontier, Hawaiian and others.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from recent airline incidents, two in only the primary week of the 12 months. Amongst them: It is time to begin taking note of the pre-take-off safety demonstrations.
On Jan. 2, all 379 people onboard a Japan Airlines Airbus 350-900 escaped the burning aircraft at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport after it collided with a Japanese coast guard plane carrying earthquake aid, killing five crewmembers on that aircraft.
Then, on Jan. 5, a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 when the two-month old plane was flying at 16,000 feet, sending oxygen masks all the way down to passengers and leaving a gaping hole within the twenty sixth row. Nobody was seriously injured on the flight, which returned to Portland, Oregon.
Each near-catastrophes underscore the importance of travelers taking note of flight attendant safety information and directions — before and through an accident.
Everyone from passengers to onlookers to aviation executives have commended the crews of those Japan Airlines and Alaska Airlines flights for shepherding passengers through safely.
Please direct your attention
It bears repeating that air travel is incredibly protected. There wasn’t a single fatal accident on a industrial passenger jet crash in 2023, considered one of the safest years on record.
But that track record is due largely to safety regulations and protocols. And through those first couple of minutes of the flight when the door is closed and safety procedures are explained, there are distractions aplenty: streaming entertainment, emails and texts and, increasingly, gate-to-gate Wi-Fi.
Passengers didn’t pay much attention even before the times of smartphones, though, in line with Nelson.
A much bigger issue, she said, is that airlines have reduced flight attendant staffing on board through the years, while increasing the numbers of seats on each plane.
“Though newspapers were a distraction and books and conversations before — so it isn’t nearly phones — I feel when there have been just more flight attendants directly in your face, more people were being attentive,” she said.
Airlines have gotten creative with learn how to capture travelers’ attentions through the safety briefing.
Some will pause any seatback screen entertainment during critical announcements. Others have introduced eye-catching production to video presentations to balance out the oft-repeated oxygen mask and life vest tutorials.
“The FAA requires airlines to provide pre-flight safety briefings on what to do if emergencies occur,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in an announcement. “The briefings must contain specific information, however the FAA doesn’t tell airlines learn how to present it.”
After the query of hearing safety instructions comes the natural query of heeding them.
The Japan Airlines inferno, which took 18 minutes to evacuate, avoided fatalities amongst travelers partly because passengers left their cabin bags behind, allowing for a speedier exit. The carrier’s safety briefing has clear animation about why travelers mustn’t bring any luggage with them during an evacuation — and it appears it helped.
In 2016, American Airlines Flight 383 aborted takeoff after an engine failure, catching fire at Chicago’s O’Hare international Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board found that some passengers brought their carry-on luggage with them through the emergency evacuation, despite being told to go away their bags.
A U.S. Transportation Department watchdog said in 2020 that it found a dozen reports from aircraft evacuations between 2008 and 2018 wherein crew members said passengers evacuated or tried to with their carry-on baggage.
Seatbelts on
Passengers are also best served to follow the seatbelt sign and strap in when seated even when the sign is off, per flight attendants instructions.
Seatbelts also help avoid injury during turbulence.
“I feel the flight attendants are doing great work,” said Anthony Brickhouse, a professor of aerospace safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “The flying public must do higher.”
Nelson said that more travelers listen to safety demos after an incident, just like the Alaska flight, photos and videos of which were widely circulated on social media, but that it won’t last.
“I’ve seen this occur throughout my profession,” said Nelson, who joined United as a flight attendant within the Nineties and said passengers, jolted by a high-profile incident, often return to their lackadaisical ways. “The query is: Is it two weeks? Three? Perhaps as much as six? There are short memories.”