Trifter

They talk you through the safety procedure as though any of it would actually do you any good at all. If anything goes wrong at 35,000 feet you will be sucked out of the plane and atomised. You will become droplets, atmospheric droplets. If you are lucky and you are only blown to smithereens, your hands will land in Turkey while your toes rain into the ground in the Loire valley. The concept of ever using a lifejacket is as ludicrous as it is impractical. Hitting water at anything over 10mph is like hitting concrete. Anyone who water skis will know that. Donald Campbell discovered that. So when the plane lands on water the fuselage will be ripped to shreds and the wings will be torn off. Any thought of being saved by your lifejacket is optimistic. Most likely you will be listening to something light and ethereal played on the harp.

Lifejackets on a plane are an absolute nonsense and quite why the airlines persist in asking us to believe that they could save us is beyond me. Is it a cynical ploy to reassure the nervous flyer, the passenger who is afraid of flying ? Actually none of these people is afraid of flying. I never met anyone afraid of flying. They’re always afraid of crashing. Crashing, that’s what they fear. Or is this lifejacket thing just ignorance on the part of the airline ? Do they themselves believe it would make a difference ?

I do love that cosy bit they do with the mouthpiece so that ‘you can give the lifejacket a little top up.’ Oh yes, let’s give it a little top up so that we are floating, fabulously full of air as we die of hypothermia. And the whistle ? For attracting attention, apparently. In the middle of the Atlantic, for God’s sake? The only attention you will attract is that of any other people in the water around you also trying to attract attention on their whistles, assuming of course you can make the thing whistle. Full of water a whistle is not such a success.

Oxygen masks ? What on earth use are they. If the plane has depressurised it is likely to be plummeting to earth, so very shortly and for about 15 seconds, regular air from outside will be available to all before oblivion hits and gravity delivers up another case for Air Crash Investigator. We hear of the oxygen masks coming down from the ceiling but never in anger, always as a result of a malfunction.

The escape exits are of course key because the only time you have any chance of surviving an incident on a plane is when it is on the ground. Getting out in a hurry is important here. If the plane has flopped onto the grass or tarmac you have about 1/5th of nanosecond before the fuel ignites and it becomes an inferno. So know your exits. Anything abaft the engines is fraught with difficulty because in the event of fire and assuming that the plane is moving at all, the flames will be swept towards the rear and you. Exits over the wings simply put you at the centre of the fuel explosion as that is where the tanks are. So the forward exits are the only option but of course you will be competing with the flight crew who will be younger and fitter than you and will get there first. Or the aisle will be blocked by a fat toad from first class. Also if the plane is still standing on its undercarriage and the chutes have not deployed you will be dropping 30 feet to the ground which if that doesn’t kill you will certainly break your legs or shatter your pelvis. You may be confined to a wheelchair for life but you will have survived the accident. You will also have the fight of your life on your hands as you try to get anything like appropriate compensation from the airline insurance company. As a quadriplegic your needs will be great. If the accident happens in the UK with a UK airline, there will be no punitive damages so you won’t be in line for gazillions just the barest minimum for survival and your medical needs. The insurance company will try to wriggle out of paying you a penny and will even suggest that it was actually all your fault. So it is better to die in a plane crash. This of course is preferred by the insurance companies as dead people cost less than living but severely damaged people.

And the airline staff implore you to listen to the safety twaddle, ‘for your own safety.’ It’s a completely pointless exercise, as if by concentrating hard on getting it right, it would make any difference. “Oh, I see, that’s how you’re supposed to tie the straps, right. Well I’ll remember that while my hair is on fire, the skin blistering off my arms and I’m doing a passable impression of Eduard Munch’s Scream, a ‘double bow round the front’ right you are.” Give the passengers something to do, something that makes them think they might be able to help themselves and perhaps they won’t notice the futility of it all. If a plane crashes you will be very lucky to survive, indeed you may not want to, just accept it.

No, when they tell me about the important safety message I raise my broadsheet and very publicly ignore the screening. Lately I’ve taken to talking very loudly to an imaginary friend about the CAA survival statistics.

“Right. Have you lot finished ? I’ll have my gin and tonic now, thank you. “

Happy flying.