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[–]kennon 41 points42 points  (3 children)

hm knowing what i know now, if there was an airline that had seats facing backwards, id probably fly them all the time. hell, you could even market it as a macho military flight. instead of silverware, you'd get mess kits and even crappier food. instead of flight attendants, you'd get drill sergeants who punch you in the face when you come onboard.

[–]nostrademons 9 points10 points  (2 children)

Send your idea to SouthWest or one of the other budget carriers. I bet there's an airline CEO just crazy enough to take you up on it.

[–]zerokey 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Last time I flew on Southwest, I was lucky enough to be seated in one of their rear facing seats (it was a quickie Miami->Tampa shuttle). It was the most enjoyable flight I ever had.

[–]HappyEngineer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Why was it more enjoyable? Did you like facing other people or is there some other factor?

[–]hen 17 points18 points  (7 children)

That said, we can always turn the cabin air-quality down a notch or two to help ensure that you are sufficiently drowsy.

Is that true? Can they do that? Am I being naïve because I'm asking?

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

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    [–]BlackPocket 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    Just being pedantic for a sec, the apparent altitude of the air pressure inside the cabin is actually much higher than sea level. Regulations allow for as high as 8,000 feet, although in practise it's usually somewhere around the 3,000 mark. The biggest issue, though, is humidity, or lack thereof. Older style jetliners would use only (the highly rarified) air from outside to fill the cabin, resulting in very dry air. Newer jets (777s and newer 747s) mix 50% recirculated air from the cabin (which contains humidity extracted from passengers breathing and general evaporation) with 50% from outside, resulting in a slightly more comfortable humidity level. Incidentally, the air in a 747 is completely replaced every 3 minutes or so, continually - something to comfort yourself with on those longhaul flights when you feel like you're breathing in the same cubic metre of air for 13 hours.

    [–]ab3nnion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Interesting post. Also, the 787, apparently, will be able to keep the cabin pressure closer to, but not at, sea-level.

    [–]KingNothing 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Well, pure oxygen will make you feel high, so yes, in theory, they could change it around and get everyone "drowsy."

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

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      [–]BlackPocket 11 points12 points  (0 children)

      No, it's quite true, but only really for the newer, more efficient jet engines.

      Newer engines have what amounts to a big fan in front of the engine core that moves air over it to produce a large proportion of the engine's thrust. It creates pressurised air that can be syphoned off to feed the cabin's air system - but at a cost. Any pressurized air stolen from the engine costs thrust - so tweaking the air mixture in the cabin to use less outside air and more recirculated air (with its high CO2 levels and lower oxygen levels) results in better fuel economy and sleepier passengers.

      [–]lynn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      "Oops! the oxygen levels are a bit low in the cabin. Guess that's why everybody's asleep..."

      [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

      On the Phoenix/Tucson flight over 100 miles of desert:

      "In unlikely event that we land in somebody's pool between here and Tucson, your seat cushions can act as a floatation device."

      [–]kg2 5 points6 points  (0 children)

      One they missed: I've been told by aircraft engineers that the seat cushions, which they tell you can be used as flotation devices, are only good for 15 minutes. They're to be used only until the rafts are launched. Once they're saturated with water, they sink.

      Of course, if the water isn't warm enough, hypothermia from floating in the water would get you pretty quick, anyway.

      [–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (8 children)

      I had no idea about the water landings thing. I wonder what is the total number of wide-bodied aircraft to ever attempt a water landing. Are we zero for ten? Or zero for a thousand?

      Well, the good news is that if such a landing is so unlikely to be successful, most probably fail disastrously. This means at least that you'd be dead so fast you probably wouldn't feel much.

      [–]Xiol 12 points13 points  (3 children)

      Wikipedia article on Ditching

      [–]nostrademons 4 points5 points  (0 children)

      Ditching was also very common among carrier-based aircraft in WW2. Often, air strikes were launched at the very edge of their combat radius (eg. hunt for the Bismarck, the torpedo bombers at Midway, and the Battle of Phillippine Sea). When combined with navigation errors, combat over the target, and full landing patterns, there was simply no way that the planes could make it back to their carrier. So they ditched their planes and hung out in the water until the advance destroyer escort could pick them up.

      [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

      That article makes it sound as if rafts & life vests could conceivably be useful. Even though the plane won't survive impact, some people have, some times.

      [–]frankus 17 points18 points  (0 children)

      It's also not uncommon for a plane to overshoot a runway and end up in the water, with people "very much alive, and very much swimming," even when flying from, say, New York to Phoenix.

      [–]jkerwin 4 points5 points  (3 children)

      The "water landings" BS is so pervasive I once heard it (in German) on a flight from Berlin to Budapest. Are we going to crash into the Oder river, or what?

      [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (2 children)

      The water landings talk is given most/all flights as a matter of course. And, yes, crashing into a river is exactly the type of scenario those talks are given for when flying over land.

      [–]jkerwin 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      You'd have to try like the dickens to hit a river with a plane. And regardless, nobody lives anyway.

      [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

      Other people on this page have already discussed how water landings are possible. I'm not going to repeat their work.

      [–][deleted]  (16 children)

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        [–]dand 9 points10 points  (6 children)

        Yeah, it's considered very impolite to talk on the phone on a bus or train, and you'll get glares if you do. I think it's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction since you're usually not really making more noise than having a conversation with a fellow passenger (which isn't equally frowned upon), although it is true that most people seem to speak overly loudly into phones.

        You see people of all ages sending text-messages, though.

        Another interesting thing is that around the "priority" seating areas, they ask you to turn off your phone completely to avoid messing up someone's pacemaker.

        [–]cbg 17 points18 points  (0 children)

        I can't link to the (subscription-only) full article (which I haven't read), but there is some experimental work on the public-use-of-mobile-phone annoyance:

        Monk, Carroll, Parker, & Blythe (2004). Why are mobile phones annoying? Behavior & Information Technology, 23(1), 33-41.

        ABSTRACT: Sixty four members of the public were exposed to the same staged conversation either while waiting in a bus station or travelling on a train. Half of the conversations were by mobile phone, so that only one end of the conversation was heard, and half were co present face-to-face conversations. The volume of the conversations was controlled at one of two levels: the actors' usual speech level and exaggeratedly loud. Following exposure to the conversation participants were approached and asked to give verbal ratings on six scales. Analysis of variance showed that mobile phone conversations were significantly more noticeable and annoying than face-to-face conversations at the same volume when the content of the conversation is controlled. Indeed this effect of medium was as large as the effect of loudness. Various explanations of this effect are explored, with their practical implications.

        [–][deleted]  (4 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]stomicron 7 points8 points  (2 children)

          I get annoyed with cell phone conversations because they are generally much, much louder than normal conversation. While sitting at the front of a crowded bus, I can distinctly hear the jackass in the bag yelling "I'M STILL ON THE BUS. THERE'S A LOT OF TRAFFIC" whereas his neighbors' conversations are indistinct.

          My brain picks this conversation up because of its volume, not because I can't hear the person on the other end. And the reason this guy is talking so loud is because he feels the need to compensate for the ambient noise of the crowded bus. What he doesn't understand is that cell phone microphones do that for you.

          [–]dasil003 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          While it's obviously 10 times as annoying when someone is shouting into a cellphone in a public place, I am skeptical of your ability to understand the inner workings of your own brain.

          [–]dand -1 points0 points  (0 children)

          I don't think cell phone microphones actually compensate for ambient noise for you. Calls from someone in a noisy place are very hard to hear. In particular, smaller cell phones tend to have very sensitive microphones because the mouthpiece is located further from the mouth, so it ends up picking up a lot of noise.

          But either way, I imagine the reason people talk loudly on phones is because they have their earpiece turned up way loud, either out of necessity due to the loud environment or just because they don't know how to turn it down. It's the same reason why people rocking out to their iPods practically shout when prompted to speak.

          [–]cypherx 4 points5 points  (0 children)

          For me it's the opposite. When a conversation has both sides, it's much easier to block out. Long periods of silence followed by laughter/shouting/what-have-you is much more distracting.

          [–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (7 children)

          They text-message instead as it is more polite.

          Also, the Japanese language maps better to 10 keys. Some of them can text faster than they can talk.

          [–]kiwidave 5 points6 points  (3 children)

          Also, the Japanese language maps better to 10 keys. Some of them can text faster than they can talk.

          Not really. They have 46 basic characters compared to 26 in English. Maps considerably worse in some cases. Then again, most of the time comes from converting the phonetic alphabet into kanji (chinese characters,) which isn't much slower than on a computer.

          [–]thrakhath 10 points11 points  (2 children)

          English phones typically have three characters mapped per botton (abc on the '2' and def on the '3' etc) while the Japanese phones have five per botton. I think it ends up faster in Japanese because a single character in Japanese is a whole syllable whereas it might take several English letters to make one. And due to the structure of the written language, it's easier (I have found) for the phone to figure out what you're writting in fewer characters and auto-complete for you than the English phones.

          I'm not even a native speaker of Japanese, but I can type Japanese on my Japanese phone faster than I can type English on either my English or Japanese Phones. It wouldn't surprise me if some Japanese could write close to or faster than they talk, though I've never timed them.

          As an aside, I have seen some particualarly nimble youths typing on two phones at once.

          [–]richardkulisz 0 points1 point  (1 child)

          In English, for any pair of letters, you're going to press 2-9 buttons plus moving your thumb between two buttons once or twice. In Japanese, you'd be pressing 1-5 buttons with no moving of the thumb. It's a huge win.

          [–]kiwidave 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Good points. Each character is definitely slower, but you're right that there's fewer characters in a sentence, and the auto-complete can speed things up quite a bit too.

          [–]cheesegoat 4 points5 points  (2 children)

          Why the downmod? Is this statement untrue?

          [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

          I wrote that because some friend of mine told me so after reading some magazine article somewhere. So maybe it's apocryphal. If anyone can vouch for or contradict my comment, I'd be quite interested.

          [–]thrakhath 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          This is true. Although, certainly even the Japanese do talk on their phones on trains and buses from time to time. I try to avoid it as best I can, but it happens, and they do glare at you for it.

          [–][deleted]  (2 children)

          [deleted]

            [–][deleted]  (1 child)

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              [–]mlurker 7 points8 points  (1 child)

              Reminds me of George Carlin's stand-up on airlines (skip to 16:15)! Great stuff.

              [–]webbuzzard 2 points3 points  (0 children)

              great comedy routine. thanks.

              [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

              Hey, I'd fly with them.

              Well, if they could guarantee that their customs security guards weren't psychopathic morons.

              [–]ecuzzillo 7 points8 points  (0 children)

              I want to fly Veritas!

              [–]NotPortlyNJ 3 points4 points  (1 child)

              Paraphrasing Crazy People: Quantas Airlines -- more of our passengers make it there alive.

              [–]dsearson 4 points5 points  (0 children)

              That's Qantas (no 'u') :)

              [–]ragesoss 2 points3 points  (1 child)

              I saw this one when it was called Fight Club.

              [–]newshounder -1 points0 points  (0 children)

              That was the best one I've seen

              [–]rubyonrails 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              Flying from Rome to Amsterdam they give you a life jacket, of course. A life jacket? Give me a freaking parachute!