{"id":166,"date":"2006-09-25T08:47:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-25T07:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=166"},"modified":"2006-09-25T08:47:00","modified_gmt":"2006-09-25T07:47:00","slug":"the-truth-about-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/the-truth-about-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"The truth about flying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\">The Economist<\/a> had a great article recently (&#8220;Welcome aboard&#8221;, subscribers only) about flying, in the form of a welcome-aboard announcement that airlines should really be making. A few quotes:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[Y]our safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=\"left\" alt=\"Life jacket\" src=\"http:\/\/images.google.co.uk\/images?q=tbn:sSis4tyP3k0cCM:http:\/\/www.sportys.com\/terryc\/images\/1321m.jpg\"\/>&#8220;Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft&#8217;s navigation systems. At least, that&#8217;s what you&#8217;ve always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn&#8217;t sound quite so good.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the most recent issue, there were some letters to the editor elaborating on this article.  I quote:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[A]t today&#8217;s cruising altitudes passengers are exposed to a considerable amount of radiation, especially on transatlantic flights close to the pole.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The bright-yellow life-jackets are not intended to act as flotation devices. They are there to make it easier for the recovery services to spot the bodies strewn across rough terrain. [&#8230;] And the advice to adopt a head-down fetal position in the event of a crash landing does nothing to preserve life [&#8230;] However, the position does tend to preserve dental data, useful for identifying dilapidated corpses.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist had a great article recently (&#8220;Welcome aboard&#8221;, subscribers only) about flying, in the form of a welcome-aboard announcement that airlines should really be making. A few quotes: &#8220;[Y]our safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing.&#8221; &#8220;Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,159,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-en","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}