While this trade-off is frightening, it is worth noting that the risk of death on board a commercial airliner remains very low, including for infants held on laps. . “Civil aircraft accidents remain extremely rare, and with CRS installed on all flights, the logistics of placing an infant in a specific seat can outweigh the safety aspects,” says the School of Aviation Safety. Sarah Barry, deputy principal, points out. University of Buckinghamshire, UK.
Not everyone was convinced by the FAA’s cost-benefit analysis, however.Last year, the Association of Flight Attendants and his CWA union asked for a change in the rulesand seating requirements for all passengers, as they have been for the past 30 years.
The campaign was inspired in part by the 1989 crash of United Airlines Flight 232, which killed 112 of the 296 people on board. Because the aircraft’s systems stopped mid-air and a forced landing was imminent, flight attendants instructed the parents of the baby in their laps to place the baby on the ground between their legs, surround them with blankets, and hold them down as best they could. . Three of the four lap infants on board were injured, and one, 22-month-old Evan Tsao, slipped into the back of the plane and died of smoke inhalation.
The following year, the NTSB added infant seats to the FAA’s list of most desired safety improvements, but the FAA’s own modeling showed that purchasing an additional ticket would encourage 20 percent of families to drive instead of fly. In 2006, the request was removed because it was shown that In particular, those with the tightest budgets end up with more road deaths.
This belief was supported by Academic research in 2002 It showed that even if only 5 percent of families chose to take to the road instead, the policy change would cause a small net increase in deaths. Additionally, the study found that the regulatory cost per person of averting deaths was approximately $1.3 billion at the time, which the researchers deemed an “inappropriate use of society’s resources.”
The paper has limitations, as the researchers did not consider what would happen if seats were free, or if airlines simply rearranged seats and offered unsold seats to parents. I admitted something. (It also ignores the fact that ticket prices often increase for other reasons, and that the cost-benefit balance may change in other countries where driving is not possible. Slightly less safe than airplanesHowever, it is not as dangerous as highway driving. )
Of course, there is more to safety on board than just fatalities, especially injuries caused by turbulence. In the United States, No one has died due to turbulence on a passenger plane since 2009However, there were 146 serious injuries, including broken bones, burns, and organ damage, with the majority of those injuries being suffered by crew members rather than passengers.
but, University of Reading research A study conducted in the UK last year showed that severe turbulence in the North Atlantic had increased by 55 per cent since 1979, with climate change making flights more unstable. However, severe turbulence is only experienced for a small portion of the total flight time, and observed even less.than 0.1% of the atmospherewhich can still lead to further injury.
