I am reading an interesting book - "Coddling of the American Mind" - that discusses peanut allergies. And I was then chatting about this with a colleague and we got to talking about making PAs onboard and the death of a young woman a few years ago on a flight:
Girl dies due to allergy
Apart from this incident, can anyone recall any other cases? Would your CAA/EASA/FAA etc record this level of detail? I presume yes as a a pax death on board would most definitely be recorded a reason would be discovered. Where would I start looking for such data? Would an FoI request be required?
My contention is that:
A) if a PA is made about allergies it will be in one language, possibly two.
B) Pax won't always understand the chosen langauge
C) Pax are allowed to and do bring their own food/snacks onboard
D) Pax sometimes (!) don't do what they are told.
Therefore there must be plenty of times passengers with allergies have been on board when another passenger has inadvertently opened and consumed some form of contaminated packet/peanut. This must happen often enough but yet there is almost no deaths/injuries making the news.
My point being that the PA doesn't help in a tangible way, only makes certain people 'feel' safer and a surrender to the onward march of '
safetyism'.
BD