Air Safety is a matter of ….. politics!

Many years ago I saw an overview of airline safety rules and regulations which revealed, in my view, a  disturbing double standard: airline attendants are provided with protective smoke hoods to use in the event of a crash, but passengers are not.

These hoods protect your eyes from cinders and smoke, and your lungs from most toxic fumes.  The hood (presuming you can get it on in an actual emergency) gives the wearer up to two minutes of precious extra breathing and visibility after a crash, which is when the vast majority of airline crash deaths occur: not during the crash, but afterwards as survivors try to escape the burning wreckage.

That’s right. The statistics clearly show that most of us, up to 75 or 80%, survive the actual impact; it is  the dark, confusion, smoke, toxic fumes, and the inability to see or breathe that cause up to 80% of all fatalities in plane crashes.

The airline attendants and crew are provided with officially sanctioned smoke hoods for their use during an emergency, presumably to stay alert and safe enough to help blinded, coughing, choking passengers out to safety … maybe. Once a plane starts smoldering, one has only about 90 seconds to get out alive.

Well, I’m not a big fan of restricted access to a product that I believe could save my life or the lives of my children.  So I rattled some cages, asked some airline personnel and made some calls and it turns out, at the time I was pushing this issue, the FAA was considering — as it had been for many years —  several different patent-pending smoke hood models for passengers.

In fact, according to the FAA, they were considering so many smoke hood models that it would take some time to find “the” right one.

The FAA banned all such masks until they found “the one.”  As of press time, “the one” had not yet been approved.  So passengers remain unprotected, and dying.

So I contacted a company in the UK that sold the smoke holds which led me to a distributor in Fort Worth, Texas.  As it turned out, I was living in Dallas at the time so could drive to the vendor to do business.

The vendor informed me that in order for him to sell me the smoke hoods at about $60 a pop, I would have to be a business.   I asked him what was the smallest order he had ever filled for a business. He said six.

So I instantly became an academic consulting business and ordered six smoke hoods.  Within a couple of days,  I was the proud owner of six orange-colored, travel savvy smoke hoods for any type of fire or smoke emergency, including in hotel rooms, on cruise ships,  and in the cabin of an airplane. This, by the way, was in 1990, TWENTY years ago!

So, I wonder how that federal legislation that is supposed to provide passengers with the same protection as airline employees is coming along these days?

The next time you board a commercial flight, try to get a peek at the safety equipment provided to the airline attendants.  Then, you’ll have to ask the attendant why the same safety equipment is not made available to passengers.

The answer is politics, my friend!

Thoughts?

By Sherry Jarrell