In what is undoubtedly another publicity stunt, RyanAir CEO Michael O’Leary says that seatbelts on a plane don’t matter. According to NBC News, he said, “If there ever was a crash on an aircraft, God forbid, a seat belt won’t save you.” His goal, supposedly, is to take out the back ten rows on a plane to create a “standing zone” where passengers would, I don’t know, hang on to bars or straps like on a subway.

I call so much BS on this I don’t know where to start. On the one hand, if there is a major crash, a seatbelt may not help. But that doesn’t mean it definitely won’t. Remember the Miracle in the Hudson? I bet seatbelts helped those passengers a lot! Plus, crashes aren’t the only dangerous things that happen. A few months ago a pilot mistakenly sent a plane into a dive, and passengers who didn’t have seatbelts on hit the ceiling of the plane. Turbulence can cause all kinds of issues and injuries if you’re not strapped in.

There is no way any safety agency would let him do this, so it is assuredly just a ploy for attention. Just like O’Leary’s idea to charge for using the lav. But, like most of is insane suggestions, it’s out there enough to get people to notice. Oh well.

Readers, your thoughts? Is this a real idea or just a publicity stunt? Do you think seatbelts matter?

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This morning I got to fly on one of Southwest’s Shamu plane. This is actually the second time in a month, which is unusual for me. The best part of it is seeing the kids’ reactions to flying on Shamu. Priceless! Now if only I got to fly on the Texas flag plane….

Coming Home from Chicago, Part 3

You guys have already heard about (and given your opinions on) people not pushing their bins and bags through security and not waiting for their turn to board. The final thing that irritated me (although sequentially it was actually the first thing) was TSA.

I actually haven’t had nearly the amount of bad TSA experiences that a lot of people have. At my small regional airport, where I am the most, they are pretty polite and actually very efficient. So I was shocked on Saturday, when one of the TSA agents was super rude to me.

The security lines at Midway were not super well defined, but I got into what seemed to be the shortest one. I was in line for a few minutes, and while no one had gotten behind me the other lines were getting longer and longer. One of the TSA agents came over to our line and put a divider right in front of me. “This line is closed,” she said, standing in front of me, folding her arms. I looked behind me to make sure the line hadn’t grown suddenly to epic proportions. It hadn’t. I said, “Could we not close it after me?” And she said, “This line is closed.”

Um, wow. So after waiting in line for almost ten minutes, I had to go find another line and get at the very end of it. Luckily, the people next to me invited me to get in front of them, which was very nice. But why did she decide to close it in front of me? There was no one behind me, and letting one more person through (me) would have had exactly the same effect. I guess the thing that made me the maddest was that it was so clearly a case of “I’m doing this because I can and you can’t say anything.” I know the TSA does worse things all the time, but seriously? Argh.

And there you have it. All the craziness I witnessed coming home from Chicago. Hopefully my next flight will be a little less dramatic!!

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