Aircraft life jackets

[Seajet]

Buck,

thing is, did those surveys supply the safety benefit info with the question, or just ask ' would you like to see where you're going ' ?

 

[macd]

In cattle class, all the surveys Ive read were heavily against rear facing seats.

In cattle class, all the passenger surveys I've read said the food should be better, but...

Seriously, if rearward facing seats demonstrably make air travel safer, passanger preferences should be irrelevant. You don't get to chose whether to wear your seat-belt or not at take-off and landing. The "if", of course, is the big question.

 

[DJE]

Seriously, if rearward facing seats demonstrably make air travel safer, passanger preferences should be irrelevant. You don't get to chose whether to wear your seat-belt or not at take-off and landing. The "if", of course, is the big question.

Seriously? When the chance of being in a crash involving at least one fatality is about one in five million per flight.

Anybody can make something safer. The clever bit is knowing when to stop!

 

[macd]

Seriously? When the chance of being in a crash involving at least one fatality is about one in five million per flight.

...or rather more than daily.

You asked for perspective. It's clear that the practical advantage of life-vests (the subject of this thread) is vanishingly tiny. Yet most commercial flights carry them. The discrepancy begs questions.

 

[DJE]

...or rather more than daily.

?????????????

More like 5 or 10 per year for civil aircraft with 19 or more passengers.

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm

 

[macd]

?????????????

Oh, you meant "one in 5 million flights"?

Nevertheless, of course I fully accept your 'vanishing returns' argument, if I may call it that. My point is that rearward-facing seats might save more lives than life-vests. If we have one, why not the other? Or neither? It all seems a bit arbitrary.

Granted this thread has given some notion of the numbers saved by life-vests, and almost none about the potential advantage of turning round the seats. However, there's this: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1991-07-07/news/9101240867_1_seat-belt-rear-facing-aviation-safety

There's also seems to be evidence that flight stewards in rearward-facing seats have better survival rates than passengers in the same aircraft. Of course that could just be due to all that ballistic mascara.

 

[Twister_Ken]

There's also seems to be evidence that flight stewards in rearward-facing seats have better survival rates than passengers in the same aircraft. Of course that could just be due to all that ballistic mascara.

No, it's to do with the crush zone they wear on the backs of their heads...