Air Veritas
Very entertaining article from The Economist (here).
Here is how it starts:
"In-flight announcements are not entirely truthful. What might an honest one sound like?
“GOOD morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is. Please ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your seat back is upright and your tray-table is stowed. At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust.”"
Some people wrote to The Economist (here) and gave their comments on this piece.
Here are my favorites:
SIR – I appreciated the honest safety-announcement from Veritas Airways (“Welcome aboard”, September 9th). But it forgot to mention that at today's cruising altitudes passengers are exposed to a considerable amount of radiation, especially on transatlantic flights close to the pole.
SIR – The bright-yellow lifejackets are not intended to act as flotation devices. They are there to make it easier for the recovery services to spot the bodies strewn across rough terrain. (I was once asked to put on a life-jacket over central Germany, some 300 miles from the sea.) And the advice to adopt a head-down fetal position in the event of a crash landing does nothing to preserve life, given that the stall speed of a modern airliner means it will connect with the ground at terminal velocity. However, the position does tend to preserve dental data, useful for identifying dilapidated corpses.
SIR – For a truly irritating experience, nothing beats flights to and from Brussels. Safety instructions are screamed at you in four languages—Dutch, English, French and German—each spoken with such a terrible accent that one wonders if the flight attendants have a mother tongue at all. I love it when they finally shut up, but at the end of the flight the torture is repeated when they shout to tell you how much they loved having you aboard, again in four languages.
SIR – The most honest briefing I have ever had was on a helicopter flying me to an oil rig in the North Sea: “Take off your watch because it stops your survival suit making a good seal around your wrist. If we go down and the water gets inside the suit, it's so cold you'll last about five minutes.”
Posted in: _Fun
Here is how it starts:
"In-flight announcements are not entirely truthful. What might an honest one sound like?
“GOOD morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is. Please ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your seat back is upright and your tray-table is stowed. At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust.”"
Some people wrote to The Economist (here) and gave their comments on this piece.
Here are my favorites:
SIR – I appreciated the honest safety-announcement from Veritas Airways (“Welcome aboard”, September 9th). But it forgot to mention that at today's cruising altitudes passengers are exposed to a considerable amount of radiation, especially on transatlantic flights close to the pole.
SIR – The bright-yellow lifejackets are not intended to act as flotation devices. They are there to make it easier for the recovery services to spot the bodies strewn across rough terrain. (I was once asked to put on a life-jacket over central Germany, some 300 miles from the sea.) And the advice to adopt a head-down fetal position in the event of a crash landing does nothing to preserve life, given that the stall speed of a modern airliner means it will connect with the ground at terminal velocity. However, the position does tend to preserve dental data, useful for identifying dilapidated corpses.
SIR – For a truly irritating experience, nothing beats flights to and from Brussels. Safety instructions are screamed at you in four languages—Dutch, English, French and German—each spoken with such a terrible accent that one wonders if the flight attendants have a mother tongue at all. I love it when they finally shut up, but at the end of the flight the torture is repeated when they shout to tell you how much they loved having you aboard, again in four languages.
SIR – The most honest briefing I have ever had was on a helicopter flying me to an oil rig in the North Sea: “Take off your watch because it stops your survival suit making a good seal around your wrist. If we go down and the water gets inside the suit, it's so cold you'll last about five minutes.”
Posted in: _Fun
Labels: Fun
posted by Bambitroll at
19:36
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