O O Ø O O O O
Air Safety First
A letter to the nice folks at easyJet.com
Ray Webster
Chief Executive
easyJet Airline Company Limited
London Luton Airport
Bedfordshire LU2 9LS
UK
Howdy, Mr. Chief Executive, sir. I'm Evan Spence, contributing editor to the weekly Internet serial pintday.org, and occasional discount flyer.
On a recent flight of yours, numbered 3358 from Bologna to Stansted, my wife pointed out to me a conflict in your safety literature. In your publication entitled Safety on Board, you pictorially describe the brace position, where passengers place their hands behind their heads and lean forward into a sort of seated crouch. (It's the first picture on the third row inside the brochure.)
When I try to do this on your 737-300 plane, sir, my head makes contact with the top of the meal tray of the seat in front of me. I am only of average height—5'10", or 178 cm in your parlance—and although I have an admittedly big head, I am short of torso. I doubt that I am alone among your customers in being unable to assume the brace position.
Knowing that you would want us to assume some sort of position in the unlikely event of an emergency, I have speculated about a couple of possibilities. First, I could lean sideways and put my head in the lap of the person next to me, who in turn would put their head in their neighbour’s lap. The person in the aisle seat would hang their body over the armrest into the corridor. I call this the elephants-on-parade position, after that scene in Disney’s adaptation of Kipling’s Jungle Book. I imagine you would want to market different seat prices depending on aisle adjacency, but I suppose that would first require a seat reservation system, which your airline is curiously without.
Second, I speculate that if I lay with my back on the seat cushion, there would be room for my torso and cranium between the back of the chair in front and my own seat. The seat belt could go around my chest, and I could curl up my legs (which if you remember, make up most of my height, head excepted) in an upside-down fetal position.
Finally—and maybe this is what I should have concluded without going to the expense and effort of writing a tongue-in-cheek open letter that will probably go unanswered—I could put both my legs in the air, bend way over, and pucker up to kiss my ass goodbye.
Please advise.
Yours truly,
Evan Spence
(Husband of) A diligent flight safety card reader.
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
PD DCLXVIII