Airline Offering Plane Crash Survival Course to Frequent Flyers

British Airways is giving their best customers a competitive edge in the event of disaster by offering a course on surviving a plane crash. Beginning next year, members of the airline's Executive Club can cash in air miles to take the four-hour safety class. From the article: "Andy Clubb, the BA manager running the course, told the Independent: 'It makes passengers safer when travelling by giving additional skills and information, it dispels all those Internet theories about the brace position, and it just gives people so much more confidence in flying.'"

It Seems To Me...

[Anonymous Coward]

An airline with some common sense would NOT charge customers for the right to be reminded of PLANE CRASHES...

A What Alert?

[Daetrin]

That makes it different from any other class how? There isn't a reputable school in the world (at least not a technical/practical one) that depends on some kind of "secret knowledge" in their classes. Everything is available one way or another to anyone who wants to find it.

The purpose of classes is to organize that material and teach it to you in an efficient way via a guide who can answer common questions in an immediate and interactive way. Some people do find it easier to go out and dig up the information and teach themselves, but a lot of people benefit from a classroom type scenario where they receive instruction from someone knowledgeable in the area.

Honestly i'd be much more wary of them if they promised that they had secrets to surviving a plane crash that weren't available to anyone else.

No, parachutes wouldn't help.

[sirwired]

First, you aren't spiraling towards the ground at thousands of feet per second. Check your math.

You wouldn't make it out the door of the plane. At a high-altitude, when you'd still have a few minutes to escape, you can't open the door due to the pressure difference. (For obvious reasons, it's completely impossible to open the door at altitude.) Once you get low enough to open the door, the air will be dense enough that the plane will almost certainly be a bit unstable and you'd have a tough time making it to the exit. On the off-chance you went through it (fighting your way through the scrum of all these people wearing ungainly heavy parachutes), the wind forces would probably snap your body in two against the door frame. If you make it out the door, you'll need to avoid the tail.

I'd be shocked, that out of an entire plane, a half-dozen made it to the ground alive.

But none of that matters... why? Because most accidents take place near takeoff, landing, and taxi, which is when parachutes would be utterly useless due to the fact you are going to hit the ground well before anybody but the pilots have time to do anything about it.

If you are going to spend a truly hideous amount of weight on safety measures (parachutes are HEAVY), there are lot better places to put it.