In-flight safety demonstrations are too long. A speech that ought to consist of
if you don't know how to fasten your seatbelt, turn round and ask daddy to help you and
in the event of an emergency do absolutely nothing until someone with a uniform instructs you to do so instead gets bloated up with lots of very difficult conceptual material like
how to use a life vest and
this large door-looking thing is, in fact, a door. I've often suspected they exist solely to distract passengers from the fact that we're not yet taxiing because I've just popped back into the terminal to grab a Coke.
But then
some idiot tries to open an emergency exit door while hurtling over God knows where at 37,000 feet, and I remember why we have to explain to everyone that the buckle is inserted into the opposite not-buckle bit and tightened snugly over your hips: people are too stupid an excitable to remember anything like common sense once they slip the surly bonds of earth. So, here is my addendum to the usual rigamarole, which I had expected everyone was smart enough to infer, but - I am often disappointed:
If the idiot next to you attempts to open the emergency exit door during flight, please return to your half-completed magazine word puzzle.
Ignore him. Have a drink.
Because - pay attention, now - the funny thing about flying people 37,000 feet up in the air is, you have to pressurize the cabin, else everyone begins to whine about the complete lack of oxygen, freezing temperatures, etc., etc. So, the air pressure inside the plane is much higher than that outside; and as emergency exit doors are designed to open
inwards, anyone attempting to open one has pull against the several thousand pounds of pressure being exerted against said door by the cabin's pressurized atmosphere. You have less chance of prying it open than you have of summoning your flight attendant with that little button we let you believe does something.
So, what's more dangerous - letting your seatmate fiddle with something til he falls drunkenly asleep, or physically assaulting and attempting to restrain someone in close quarters?
Next time: how to turn your iPhone off. Shocking how many people develop spontaneous hypoxia and simply
forget.