Flying the "Friendly Skies" or not so "Friendly Skies"

I am been flying the “Friendly Skies” of the world now for more years then I care to remember. In particular, for the last 20 years of my working life, most of the companies I have worked for have been “FIFO” (Fly in Fly out).

When I started flying in my early years it was always an adventure, for me it was anyways. I will always look back on those early days of my first flights with great fondness and envy because I would like to recapture that sense of “adventure” again. Of course a lot of things have changed since my first flight in the 1970’s. Some of the changes have been good while other changes have been, shall we say, not good at all. The biggest changes we have faced by far as flying goes, were actually forced on the world as a whole because of the events of 911 and other terrorist threats. The changes were and are for our protection and in the end, having more protection is a good thing for everybody but the price we have to pay for that protection is very high and it affects everybody that walks into any airport or any form of public transportation for that matter.

The one thing that has never changed over the years though is when the Stewardess; (forgive my old fashioned use of the word “Stewardess”, the politically correct term now is “Flight Attendant”) would stand in the aisle of the plane and tell you what to do in case of a water landing (meaning crash). The flight attendant would tell you where the emergency exits are so when the plane fills up full of toxic smoke from fire before flooding and providing you have survived the crash, you will know where to walk calmly to the nearest exit while you are on fire and can’t see a dam thing because of all the smoke in the cabin even though those little floor lights are showing you the way… yea right!

They also tell you what to do should the plane lose cabin pressure all of a sudden, layman’s terms… a hole in the cabin sucks out all the oxygen which gives you only seconds to put on the oxygen mask that drops in front of you, providing you haven’t been sucked through that little hole in the cabin because you weren’t wearing your seat belt and are now free falling from 30,000 feet up. You won’t have to worry about the ground killing you when you when your body hits it at over 120 miles per hour because you would have died almost immediately once you were sucked out of the plane from the lack of oxygen and would have froze to death in a matter of seconds with the -70 degree temperature. The flight attendant also says to make sure you put on your oxygen mask first and then if you are travelling with children you should decide which child you like the best and put the oxygen mask on that child first and you are to do all of this calmly while everything around you is being sucked out the plane.

I will admit that people who have never flown need to hear what to do in case of an emergency but what gets me to this very day is the way the flight attendants will actually explain to you and also show you at the same time how to buckle up a seat belt and how to unbuckle it. The basic design of seat belts has not changed. They have been around longer then I have been alive and they have been made a law to wear in cars for over 40 years now in most places. I am sorry to say this but if you need somebody to show you how to buckle up a seat belt and unbuckle it, you should not be travelling unsupervised. I have never really understood what good wearing a seat belt will do you when the plane hits the ground travelling at over 600 miles an hour, but hey, who I am to say, I have never been in a plane that has crashed. Maybe wearing a seat belt is what saved those survivors you hear about every now and then… “A plane crashed today with 287 people and 10 crew members on board in the everglades of Florida. It is estimated that the plane was travelling at 400 miles per hour when it hit the ground but 3 people survived because they were wearing their seat belts” and if you believe that, I have some property in those same swamps to sell you.