Are seatbelts useless ?

[airazurxtror]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/aviatio ... -boss.html

Mr O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, dismissed the notion seatbelts were an essential safety requirement, saying: “If there ever was a crash on an aircraft, God forbid, a seatbelt won’t save you.
"You don't need a seatbelt on the London Underground. You don't need a seatbelt on trains which are travelling at 120mph and if they crash you're all dead..."

He is currently seeking to create “standing room only” cabins for students and budget travellers, selling £1 tickets to European destinations.
"If you say to passengers it's £25 for the seat and £1 for the standing cabin, I guarantee we will sell the standing cabin first,” he said. “No question.
“We don't have heavy landings anymore "If you say to someone,' look, hang onto the handle there, you're coming in to land', they'll be fine.
The 'standing cabin' proposals are currently ruled out by European Safety regulations which say passengers must be belted in for take-off and landing.

Mr O'Leary, whose low-cost airline posted a 10 per cent rise in first-half profits to £477m, said: "We're always looking for new ways of doing things; it's the authorities who won't allow us to do them.
“They are all a bunch of plonkers.”

The outspoken chief executive added flights should no longer be considered a luxurious experience, with passengers more focused on simply getting to their destination.
"The problem with aviation is that for 50 years it's been populated by people who think it's this wondrous sexual experience; that it's like James Bond and wonderful and we'll all be flying first class when really it's just a b----- bus with wings.
"Most people just want to get from A to B. You don't want to pay £500 for a flight.

“You want to spend that money on a nice hotel, apartment or restaurant... "You don't want to p--- it all away at the airport or on the airline."

[cathay belgium]

and there we go again,... put him in a mental.. because this shit is getting way too far
hopefully the papers finally let this one go by,.. or report it and charge FR for it
cxb

[sean1982]

I wish this fool would keep his mouth shut and do what he does best: numbers!
I also wish the press would stop falling for it

[Inquirer]

Seatbelts are there mainly to prevent injuries during turbulences, no?
Does this mean ryanair doesn't care about the physical wellbeing of its passenger during the flight then?

Now that I think of it: they have shown they couldn't care less if you dehydrate while waiting on their plane for several hours as we have learnt this summer, they obviously don't shy away from risking a crash because of something as stupid as fuel deprivation and now they explicitly say to hope for everybody's dead during an accident even!!!!!

This man has clearly lost the last bit of humanism in his obsessive drive to lower costs. Is he getting his inspriration for the product improvements and efficiency gains at his airline not from Southwest Airlines, but rather from the Nazi train transports to their extermination camps, maybe? Those were highly efficient and extremely cheap to run too and certainly came without any frill whatsoever. :wtf:

[Air Key West]

Is everybody again, including the press, going to fall into MOL's trap for free publicity/advertsing ?

[airazurxtror]

Seatbelts are there mainly to prevent injuries during turbulences, no?

Now, seriously, how often are there turbulences really needing a seatbelt, on European flights ?
Nearly never, in my experience. I do about 50 european flights per year since a good many years, and I have never needed the seatbelt to protect me from turbulences.
One is more more at danger on a bus or a tram of the STIB, for instance !

[Inquirer]

My last transatlantic flight was EXTREMELY turbulent, to the point you could not go to the toilet and there was no inflight service for over 2 hours. I was very lucky to have a seatbelt and be able to strap it on very tightly, or I would have had several very close and unpleasant encounters with the bins above my head. No seatbelts on that flight would have ment casualties, for sure.

Clearly, at ryanair, the personal wellbeing of passengers is of no importance whatsoever: truly a very disappointing safety attitude (or rather a complete lack of it) by this airline's CEO once again.

With such a mentality, you may as well remove ALL safety equipment from the plane too and accept XX additional casualties every so many years. Given this isn't the first time this airline offers us a glimpse on its feelings towards safety and the priority is gets from them, you'd be tempted to think they actually may have done a detailed cost calculation and found it would be cheaper for them to accept the consequences of a higher accident rate in future for the sake of lowering their costs.

Not the way to go, in my view!

[sean1982]

airazurxtor, I'm happy I have them about ONCE A WEEK! and I do about 800 flights per year!!!

[sean1982]

Inquirer, this is 1 individual's view (which is purerly driven by free publicity) not the airline's view of safety. If you would fly Ryanair you would see the crew strictly enforce and obey the seatbelt signs! Probably more rigourously then most airlines. In fact when I fly other airlines I'm often surprised about crew not enforcing the signs

[cathay belgium]

Hi,

eeuuuhhh airazur.. no need to defend a completely stupid idea that was only invented for free advertising...

CX-B

[Inquirer]

I accept all that, and I have already flown Ryanair a few times (not any longer, since they don't serve anything of interest to me personally nor valuable to my company) yet this is not just the personal view of any individual though, it's the view of your CEO who should be leading by example.

A 'screw safety if it costs too much' attitude is NOT what you'd want to see demonstrated by any CEO, be it at an airline or in fact any other industrial company. At my company (not an airline at all, BTW) management is spending loads of money on prevention of accidents on the workfloor and safety measures are now also included in the quality audits I regularly conduct when visiting sites and rightfully so: safety should always come first if you are taking the concept of corporate responsability remotely serious!

Somehow it shows time and time again ryanair is not a very responsible business indeed, I am sorry to say because I know it will once again hurt your professional feelings and I know you are doing your very best to get rid of the image of working for 'just' ryanair. Let's say your CEO isn't exactly helping you on that front with shamefully disrespectful remarks like these!

[Flanker]

Governments like to give themselves a waiver but to others, no way.
Europe has become a place where government does whatever it wants and all the rest can go f*** themselves.

I remember that 20 years ago, the Belgian social security system would cover most if not all of your medical bills. Few were the companies that offered hospital insurance and other forms of insurance.
Today, hospitals and schools are being managed by "managers" who cut and cut and cut, and the standards of medical care have become lower than in the USA. In the USA, you pay 20% of income taxes on average, and 6.2% of social security taxes, less than half that people pay in Belgium....leaving you with plenty of money to buy yourself an insurance coverage, which is usually barely 200$ a month per person or 350$ for an entire family and it covers regular check-ups for free, and big medical bills with just a 500-2000$ deductible, at private hospitals 10 times cleaner, better equipped and more efficient than hospitals in Belgium where you have to wait 3 hours to get an x-ray and 2 months for a specialist visit.

I also remember that parking used to be free wherever you went, but if you wanted to park comfortably, you needed to go into a private parking and pay. Today, you have to pay for parking everywhere you go even on the streets, which were built with our tax money! I see why they put coin meters in large cities in the US, but in Europe, after the social security tax, income tax and VAT on all purchases, they dare to charge you 2€ per hour for parking on the streets that were built with tax money!

I salute MOL for his initiative. Sure it's publicity for his airline but he has a point. Standing seats should be allowed. Take a Brussels- Amsterdam trip with the train and compare it with a CRL-MAD. Same duration if not longer, train prices crazy expensive, AND NO PLACE TO SIT. There you have to stand, you have no choice between sitting and standing and it's crowded and it's HELL.
I've been on a low speed tram accident and a low speed bus accident, both in public transportation in Belgium, and people were flying around the cabins and hitting their faces/heads on the bars. One woman hit her head and went into epileptic shock.
Notice when you sit on the bus or the tram, how there usually is a horizontal bar just in front of your face for no apparent reason, ready to hit you at the first accident?

They need to fix that.
Will they do that? Never in your life, because although schools sell you the propaganda that democracy is there for everybody, it only serves those who know how to use it.

[airazurxtror]

My last transatlantic flight was EXTREMELY turbulent, to the point you could not go to the toilet and there was no inflight service for over 2 hours. I was very lucky to have a seatbelt and be able to strap it on very tightly, or I would have had several very close and unpleasant encounters with the bins above my head. No seatbelts on that flight would have ment casualties, for sure.

We were speaking of European flights. Ryanair does not (yet) fly transatlantic.

[Inquirer]

And you can not have turbulences on European flights then?

In that case, sean1982 must be flying 800 transatlantic flights a year then....

[sean1982]

airazurxtor, I don't know how much FR pays you to defend these kind of nonsense but I sure hope it's a lot more then they pay me

[SN539]

My last transatlantic flight was EXTREMELY turbulent, to the point you could not go to the toilet and there was no inflight service for over 2 hours. I was very lucky to have a seatbelt and be able to strap it on very tightly, or I would have had several very close and unpleasant encounters with the bins above my head. No seatbelts on that flight would have ment casualties, for sure.

We were speaking of European flights. Ryanair does not (yet) fly transatlantic.

Of course, when approaching the european coast, storms and winds are making a "U" turn and going back to America It's a well known meteorological phenomenon !!! But maybe does Sir Mol control the storms and the winds ???

[Tomskii]

Was wondering why it took so long before Mr. Excentric would launch another idea of his to promote his airline..

[airazurxtror]

airazurxtor, I don't know how much FR pays you to defend these kind of nonsense but I sure hope it's a lot more then they pay me

They don't pay me : it's just for fun !

[Inquirer]

Luckily at least you can see the fun of doing this then.
Most people would just think it's pretty pathetic astroturfing by somebody who has way too much free time at hands and not nearly enough social contacts to fill it with, but whatever, to each his own pleasure.
Enjoy!

[airazurxtror]

Luckily at least you can see the fun of doing this then.
Most people would just think it's pretty pathetic astroturfing by somebody who has way too much free time at hands and not nearly enough social contacts to fill it with, but whatever, to each his own pleasure.
Enjoy!

+1 !