Peanut Allergies
 

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

I have never been asked not to eat nuts in my local pub or indeed in any establishment, pub, cinema, theatre, restaurant, shop .. I imagine somebody being in there who has a nut allergy must be in the same order of likelihood as being on any given flight.

You make a good point especially regarding a cinema/theatre - rows of seats, arm to arm, enclosed space and plenty of snacks being had in most cinemas these days and there is zero issue.

BD

Your local restaurant or cinema doesn’t have diversion costs, FTL concerns and compensation for passengers. And hopefully an ambulance can arrive quicker than to an aircraft at 40000ft. Severe allergy reactors can also “easily” avoid those places, but if one need to travel it’s hard to avoid flying. But yes I do agree it’s almost a pointless gesture, but if the PA lowers the risk by 1%, then it’s going to be made. For the airlines benefit as much as anybody else’s!

Yes all well and good but my point isn’t that we shouldn’t be lowering the risk/cost. Lower risk/cost is generally a good thing. But we don’t lower risk by adding another engine do we?

My question is; is there actually a risk in the first place?

I found this paper after a bit of digging and it has all the usual caveats. It’s based on five US airlines, covering nearly two years of data. Nonetheless, a large chunk of data to peruse. Here is the Link

“The communications center received calls about 11,920 in-flight medical emergencies among an estimated 744 million airline passengers during the study period, for a rate of 16 medical emergencies per 1 million passengers. There were 7,198,118 flights by the included airlines during the study period, for an incidence of 1 in-flight medical emergency per 604 flights.”

Table 1 states that of the 11,920 emergencies - 265 were allergy related of which 12 resulted in a diversion, 8 ended up in hospital and zero deaths.

That’s 12 diversions for 7,198,118 flights or 1 diversion per 599,843 flights. With no deaths.

And according to Google since 1978 you have an approximately 1 in 188,000 chance of dying in an aircraft accident.

So about three times less likely to solely divert to all allergic reactions reported in the above study than to die in a crash.

I feel like I have answered my own question :8:8:8

It’s incredibly frustrating. The pret case often gets brought up- but she would have suffered the allergic reaction wherever she was given she ate the baguette which had been mislabelled- no airborne exposure, no airline food involved, no other passengers, no peanuts

the CAA has had guidance for a long time saying the announcements or restrictions are ineffective, and yet they persist. There was also recently a review posted saying the same thing. And yet they persist.

these kind of threads often end up with lots of pearl clutching and hand wringing posts either from white knights or people with loved ones with allergies, essentially strawmanning “why is your snack so important” or offering up “evidence” of low quality for example suffering mild symptoms which could equally be anxiety or other presentations, and then finding someone 10 rows away had eaten a snickers around the same time. There is never any actual objective evidence presented and yet the scientific studies have never been clearer

I will be very interested to see what you are able to come up with- I suspect not much but effectively crowdsourcing the literature review seems like a smart move

So having people with very real fears feeling safer is a bad thing? What do you want them to do, just be braver and hope everything will be OK?

You could ask the same question on many things in aviation. How many lives has the whistle or light on the life jacket saved? I’d guess 0, yet they are still manufactured and included on the demo. But do you still want them or not…?

infact according to QI (British TV show) life jackets haven’t saved a single life in modern times, so statistically why bother hey.

my concern is for want of another word a media beat up or possibly an industry or something that has told these people they are at risk every time they step on a plane, when there is zero objective evidence of help. It’s not even a theoretical risk. It’s just not a risk. How does it help anyone for the anxieties to be pandered to? It just doesn’t. Horrible way to live a life IMO. How hard would it be for everyone to collectively say “I know you’re worried but there really is no evidence of risk. Do your prep, bring your meds, but don’t waste time worrying”. And how would that be a bad thing?!

This is a better argument although I’d be surprised if the stat is completely accurate. Zero lives saved? Really?

it’s what they claim. Watch and go to the 1h59m15s mark for the discussion on such safety devices. They conclude lifejackets are pretty much just for reassurance, so the same in all likeliness as the peanut policy. But would you get on a ship without lifeboats? maybe they are the same thing too

we’re obviously going somewhat off topic but I’d be surprised if flotation devices in general didn’t at least contribute to the limited survival of Air Florida 90, for example. Was the life jacket the one and only thing that saved lives there? Probably not. Would more life jackets have saved more lives? Probably not. But for a quiz show to claim they’ve never saved a single life seems incorrect. I note with interest that there are entire websites dedicated to errors made by QI, perhaps this one belongs there

We are off piste, but hey it’s fun
well the program says modern times. Is 1982 still considered modern? A 737-200? I guess some are still in service. Quickly reading the accident report and wiki page it seems the survivors managed to hold onto the floating tail section, and had 1 additional “floatation device” between them but sounds like it wasn’t vital.

back to the original topic. The infamous prett sandwich wasn’t mislabeled, fresh items made at source did not require allergen or ingredient information at all. Since changed. A terrible event and one no one wants repeating, which is probably why the PA announcements are made. Just like asking electronic devices to be off for a Low Visibility Approach/takeoff, it likely makes no difference at all but why take a chance

Being it is as it is; a topic on a sub-forum of a forum with the word “Rumour” in its name…. any direction it takes is interesting.

I reckon the facts speak for themselves WRT peanut allergies; might as well warn about lightning strikes embarking and disembarking.

And the point of the topic was not about feelings; quite the opposite. I was trying to find evidence to support the behaviour. I found none. However if it makes a certain demographic ‘feel’ better then no harm; no foul. I think the same of flat earthers/anti-vaxxers. I’m perfectly happy for them to feel that way and can also be observant of the facts and evidence,

WRT lifefackets, bells and whistles - why would you attempt to reduce someone’s attempt to seduce a passing sailor to such a base sentiment? (This is a satirical sentence).

Also, did not the premature deployment of buoyancy aids in the Ethiopian hijacker lead to greater deaths?

To be clear again; if the evidence does not support the assumption; the assumption is wrong. If it that hurts your feelings then well I guess that’s okay too.

Even if the risk is minimal, the fact that some passengers feel safer could be enough to justify the measures, although it’s important to balance this with an understanding of the actual level of risk and not overstate the need for such precautions.

Surely if the evidence does not support the assumption, the assumption is not proven, not necessarily wrong.

Coddling...
 

BoeingDriver99 - a great book, for so many reasons. Really highlights the situation we are in now. For those not aware, it's:

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

Regarding nuts, BBC / CAA had this to say recently:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2dpkpjjnw2o