Originally Posted by
Radgirl
Why bother to have slides? Or any other emergency equipment for 'rare events'? Would you care to tell us the duration of consciousness in the case of sudden depressurisation in the cruise for a healthy adult? And would you care to postulate on how long an elderly patient with heart disease would survive? And compare it with the time needed for an emergency descent to 10,000 feet?
Not sure I would be happy without oxygen. Must pick one of the 75% of seats that has working oxygen. Ryannair would probably be charging a premium for them if they operated them
Oh I think you misunderstood my intention with that statement. I just wanted to illustrate why deleterious effects from non functioning O2 masks seam quite rare, and why airlines aren't 'up in arms' because of possible faulty equipment, because (luckily) flight regimes where masks save lives are quite rare, but still occur (any time you're flying over mountains basically). I certainly advocate for plenty of emergency equipment, I was just highlighting why we might not have seen many injuries related to these failures, specifically because most depressurizations occur in regimes where quick emergency descent is possible, so even not using a mask should not cause serious injury. Unfortunately it is almost always media pressure and 'learning from mistakes' that drive (aviation) improvements, and not an inherent drive for safety from the airlines, so presumably they would only insist on improvements if incidents were to occur with more frequency.