Um, gee. Could’ve been worse:
“People flew up to the ceiling, hit their head on the (luggage) bins, and then remained up on the ceiling for what to them seemed like an unusual amount of time only to come crashing down on top of other people.”
Don’t mind flying up toward the ceiling—so long as I’m only up there for the usual amount of time…
ALWAYS keep your seatbelt on when seated, whether that seat belt light is illuminated or not. And anyone who doesn’t, and then lands on my head, is getting my foot up their ass as soon as we’re on the ground.
at least it wasn’t on one of the invisible planes they’re making in the EU.
Get out the bottle of Lorazepam!
Any chance that you might stop posting the Breitbart links you get off of Drudge, Dan? Can’t you find another story to link that doesn’t give that waste of organic matter more revenue?
“Hmm, I sure have been stuck on this ceiling for an unusual amount of time.”
In car crashes, too, an unbelted passenger can become a lethal projectile, impacting and killing belted passengers. I’m trying to find the link to that study about the additional statistical risk to a person sitting in front of an unseatbelted backseat passenger…
Meanwhile, enjoy this public service announcement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-9JR2P4w…
Not bad. My flight from Honolulu in late August. Well 10 minutes after taking off did we find out the rear rudders were out of sync. Couldnt land because the plane was weighed down with fuel. So we had to circle around and burn fuel ….. for 3 1/2 hours!!
qantas never crashed.
Aww shit. Breitbart. I wouldn’t have clicked-through if I’d noticed that. Don’t want to give that douchebag any additional clicks and ad revenue.
Yeah, when they tell you to keep your seat belt fastened, it’s no joke.
People tend to forget that you are hurtling through the air at 500 MPH and 35000 feet in a very large metal container. Me, I’m not capable of forgetting that, so I tend to drink heavily before boarding.
Similar thing happened to me many years ago in a Boeing plane. We hit clear air turbulence, and lost 8,000 feet altitude before pilot regained control. Everybody was belted in except for one elderly gentleman who got up to help his daughter. He too ended up on the ceiling, until he came crashing down. He died from his injuries.
Horrifying experience, but I was flying again in six months. Life goes on. Never occurred to me to sue anybody.
@1 Sounds kinky, Matt from Denver…and here I thought you didn’t like talking about sex in the comments…;)
@8, not quite true. Qantas hasn’t had a fatal crash in almost 60 years, and never a fatal jet crash, but there have been accidents causing hospital injuries just in the last couple of years.
Damn it @8 – I wanted to say that.
…which I managed to post while the article was still loading incredibly sloooooooooooowly, and hence hadn’t read it properly. (Yes, I do feel like an idiot, thanks for asking.)
@13,
I take it you’ve never seen Rain Man?
Considering that they were cruising at 37k feet on autopilot, I would guess that the seatbelt light would NOT have been on. So when the auto-pilot suddenly disengaged and they entered a dive, they wouldn’t have been warned to fasten their seatbelts first.
That said, it’s a good idea to keep your seatbelt on whenever you’re seated on a plane. I think they tell you to do that in their little spiel at the beginning of the flight too. This little story is pretty good motivation for me to keep my seatbelt fastened next time I’m on a plane too. You don’t have to crash for the seatbelt to keep you safe.
Hey, you gotta pay big, big money to do the zero-g simulation! $10,000 at least, I’d guess. Those folks got it for the price of a regular airline ticket! What a steal!!
Years ago – probably about 38 years ago (I know it was when stewardesses still wore short skirts) – Papa Vel-DuRay and I were flying back to Omaha when the plane hit turbulence and threw one the stews up on the ceiling and down onto us. Her skirt rode way up, and her hat fell off, and she bruised her ribs ribs badly. We sat there with her on us for quite a few minutes while a doctor checked her out. She was amazingly charming and composed about it.
in regard to #8: Quantas never crashed.
Quantas has had what would be considered crashes, but they’ve never “lost” a plane, i.e. had a crash so severe that the aircraft couldn’t be repaired and had to be scrapped. There was an incident years ago where an aircraft was heavily damaged on landing, but Quantas repaired it at a cost much greater than the value of the air frame to maintain their “We’ve never crashed” standing.
Not to in any way diminish their amazing record.
Wow…I’m so glad my flights were quite smooth and uneventful. Knowing my luck, this will happen to me riiiiiight when we hit that point just north of Deadhorse, Alaska in a 777, with no place to land for several hours, and I’ll be taking a jog around the plane at that moment.
Hi from Jiangyin, China, BTW! The site works here, Great Firewall be damned!
in regard to #8: Quantas never crashed.
Quantas has had what would be considered crashes, but they’ve never “lost” a plane, i.e. had a crash so severe that the aircraft couldn’t be repaired and had to be scrapped. There was an incident years ago where an aircraft was heavily damaged on landing, but Quantas repaired it at a cost much greater than the value of the air frame to maintain their “We’ve never crashed” standing.
Not to in any way diminish their amazing record.
A Breitbart link? Seriously, Dan?