Rover 2701,that’s the point. Everybody DOES know that it’s going to be a tight squeeze on a charter flight. It has been for years. They keep on booking. The bottom line is that it is the cost of the holiday that will decide if a customer travels or not.
As I said earlier, we can ALL travel schedule airline, if we really want comfort.
Someone pointed out that some destinations are not served by a direct flight; well you have to get a connecting flight, most inconvenient. That’s the advantage of the package holiday. Convenience and price is the reason package holiday’s sell.
Clipstone posted the conclusions to some research that was carried out by the company that we both work for. It is genuine information.
I do believe that packing passengers in like sardines, isn’t safe. I took the opportunity to look at the safety briefing yesterday and we show the brace position to be; arms over your head, with your head on your lap OR the back of the seat in front. The CAA has approved this, I won’t comment. I will comment on the safety issue of passengers who stuff bags weighing 10 kg or more, in the overhead bins. These bins are not very strong and in an incident, a collapsing overhead bin would be certain. We even had one chap stow his chainsaw, still full of petrol!!! I personally had an incident of a gallon of white vinegar leaking into the wiring from the overhead bins. We get passengers who insist that they do not need to sit down in turbulence. They are willing to take the risk. It’s just hard luck for the poor devil that they get thrown onto as they stagger down the isle. The point is, that the safety concerns cited, is in my opinion more to do with the lawyers convenience in the court, rather than any real concern on the part of the plaintiff. (Or a significant number of passengers)
I hope all airlines are forced to provide very comfortable seats. It will help curb “air rage” incidents and because the price of a holiday will increase, the “riff raff” elements will be less likely to be able to save enough DHSS handouts to go for a p**s -up in “Ibeefa”.
[ 28 January 2002: Message edited by: max_cont ]</p>