Don't suppose anyone's ever bothered matching the missing belts to the previous flight pax seating? Let the bast@rds swim home for the return leg

<img src="mad.gif" border="0">

The attachment of the seat belt halves is a catch 22 situation..... <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">

In this part of the World anyway, the halves were always secured to the seat frame with a split (or Cotter) pin, thus preventing easy removal by passengers. <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

However, they were removed (the pins) to save time. <img src="eek.gif" border="0"> During a turnround if you had a lot of soiled belts, particualrly after a very rough flight, or maybe a lot of drunks <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0"> it would take too long for the cleaners to swap the belts, sometimes even causing a delay..... <img src="eek.gif" border="0">

Oops! Forgot to say that the little fuggers had a one-way ticket.
They had eased the strap out of the larger part of the clip (the female part? Yeah, if it is wider in the middle, it must be. Right?) But we were unable to slip the same parts off the child extension belts and slide the buckles back onto the main pax belts.

Now, If you are gonna start talking about JAR Maintenance Regulations and s*** like that......

You gotta wonder...don't you...!!!
These two pages of nonsense could only eminate from...guess where??

The worry is ...they're serious!!

Had this a couple of years ago in Luton, some Italian students made off with various bits of seat belts. The cabin crew hurtled into baggage reclaim and pointed out the offenders to customs who found said items in their bags.......and the Luton police didn't want to know!!! Having their return tickets invalidated doesn't somehow seem adequate.

Tin Kicker and others,

A SATA Caravelle crashed in the sea in the Canaries and lots of pax did not survive this surviveable crash because they could not unfasten their seatbelts. Some had raw fingers from trying to open the slide through type as an unlatch type.

Since then it has been law to demonstrate the procedure, even though almost all aircraft have the unlatch type of buckle. I have had passengers in my car who could not unfasten belts - fortunately not in emergency case.

One problem is that many airlines mention "releasing" the belts in the demo, whereas the evacuation order calls for "Unfastening" or "Undoing". May seem a small point (if all pax understand English) but could cause trouble in a court of law.

Gerry Lee Lewis had the best song about this.

People that steal aircraft safety equipment should be charged with sabatoge. After a couple of people go to jail for a year, word will get out and it'll stop. Unfortunately, there are many many people in this world that respect only force and any attempt to reason with them is in vain.