Air NZ safety vid provokes terror in the skies

Slightly off topic.

But does anyone know if there is anywhere where you can try out the emergency de-planing drill in a simulator, as aircrew do during training? As a moderately frequent flyer I think it would be good to do -- and a few people on board who have been through the drill could make the whole flight safer. After all -- buildings are a piece of piss to get out of compared to planes, yet they have fire drills all the time.

Now we know

why they provide a sick bag in the seat pocket in front of you.

Ah, yes, Air NZ

They do a decent line in just entertaining enough flight safety videos that you can tolerate watching once.

cameo

For those not in NZ, most of the actors are AirNZ staff, but there's also this guy:

http://youtu.be/Cu1eWIGo-XI

Saftey

The safety briefs are basically all the same.

By the time the actually do it, I have already:

Read the safety card (which tells you exactly the same thing the cabin crew does)

Determined where the nearest forward and aft exit is.

Memorized the number of seats I need to count and where to turn in case I have to get out in the dark.

Memorized how I would need to open the door, also in the dark if necessary.

Ye gods!

I reckon there's a serious risk of no-one taking in any of it, bcos by about 30s they're creased up on the floor laughing. I only made it to "stretch and slide" before I fell off my chair. Christ knows how I'd survive the full thing.

Let's make it realistic ...

where do you get that much leg room!

Escape.... Really?

I've always preferred the "smoke 'em if you've got 'em" approach to airplane escape drills. The chances of actually escaping a crashing plane are so small there is not much point in worrying about it.

Ummm actually.

Hasn't been a fatal US major airline crash in about 10years

Some of this is marketing - when you book a ticket on UA and end up flying on a 12seat commuter plane operated by 1man and a dog thats just code-sharing, if one crashes then it was nothing to do with UA.

Water landings aren't that bad - assuming it's a water landing a'la Hudson not a water landing as in falling from 38,000 ft and hitting the atlantic nose first. People normally die when they inflate their life jackets inside the plane. Which suggests that the American flight's passengers either listened to the briefing - or didn't know where the lifejackets were..

And finally Aeroflot's reputation is unfair - all flights in the USSR were counted as Aeroflot. So cargo flights into Kabul, supply trips in winter to siberian bases, one man survey flights over the artic all counted as aeroflot crashes.