Championship Safety Announcements

You know how in skating competitions the judges hold up cards with numbers on them to indicate the skater's score? I want to distribute such cards on a flight and when they finish the preflight "safety" announcement we can all score the delivery.

Lavatory Lies

Many US airlines, post 911, claim that you must use the "lavatory" in your class of service for your "safety and comfort". When you hear this you know that they are lying their asses off.

First off, it is not for your comfort and secondly it is not for anybody's safety. The safety line is a lie. They probably paid some moron a lot of money and called him an expert. This "expert" who cries "safety" flies first class and wants the toilet to himself, so he says "it is unsafe to use toilets outside of your class of service.

You see, airlines such as Southwest Airlines, and others which have only one class of service , safely fly with people in  the front of a 737 and these people use the toilet at the front of the aircraft. It's just an airline lie for elitism. This isn't sour grapes - as much as I fly I am frequently upgraded and I do not think a person in the front of the airplane should have to go to the back to use the toilets - especially if there is a line at the back and no line at the front.

How the airlines handle this rule really speaks volumes about their service philosophy. I was once on a flight from Seattle to Tokyo.There were two sections of the airplane between me and the cockpit. I was at the front of coach and there was a long line toward the rear toilets. There was a toilet a few rows ahead of me with no line, so I used it. As I came out an exceptionally rude flight attendant demanded to know my seat location. When I pointed to my seat she rudely chastised me in front of the other passengers for using the toilet in business class. This was on the now defunct Northwest airlines. If it was a blind passenger who did that on US Air, they would probably land at the nearest airport, throw blind person (and service animal) of the plane and then require passengers to check out and check in the role of toilet paper in order to ensure the correct lavatory is used.

Now, on Alaska Airlines (www.alaskaair.com) they have the same rules about using the "right" lavatory, but when they see that there is a cart between your seat and the toilets, or they see a line at the back and none at the front, do you know what they do? Yeah, they do what decent people do... they let you use the toilet.

You just have to wonder why Southwest airplanes aren't falling out of the sky left and right. Obviously, using the wrong toilets is very dangerous.

It really is time for the airlines to stop lying to us all. The lavatory regulations are just a load of crap.

The TSA, and the airlines cutting the crap... is truly an unlikely event.

I'll tell you how later

It always cracks me up. You sit down on the airplane and just before they close the door the captain turns on the fasten seat belt sign. Usually the flight attendants tell you that everyone must have their seat belt on before the plane leaves the gate. OK, so far so good, but if that is the case, why do they wait 5 to 15 minutes to tell us HOW to use the seat belts? It must be an FAA regulation. In the unlikely event of a fire on the airplane, while it is still at the gate, well before the safety demonstration, you will have to figure out how to unbuckle the seat belt you already put on all by yourself :)