Photo: slushpupBefore reading any further, come up with an answer to the question of how much an airline would need to pay you to give up your life vest on your next flight. (You would still have your cushion to use as a flotation device, but good luck hanging onto that cushion after the plane crash-lands in the water!)
Canadian airline Jazz Air thinks the answer to that question must be less than 3 cents. The airline recently announced that they were removing life vests from their airplanes in order to save on fuel costs. They can get away with using seat cushions as flotation devices since their flights mostly stay within 50 miles of the shore.
How much will this move save them on fuel costs? The life vests weigh about one pound apiece. I don’t know how long their average flight is. Let’s say it’s 1,000 miles. Based on this online discussion, it seems that the fuel costs to fly one extra pound a distance of 1,000 miles is about 3 cents — so removing the life vests saves the airline 3 cents per seat per flight; not exactly big money.
I’d take the 3 cents. I value my life very highly, but I think that the chance the life vest will save me is vanishingly small.
I suspect, however, that most passengers would pay 3 cents for the life vest — which is why there were probably audible groans in the Jazz headquarters when their choice to remove life vests made headlines.
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The way to value the life jacket is to pose the question the other way around: If I tell you the odds of it ever being used or saving your life, how much would you be willing to pay for one?
I would bet in most cases the answer would be just about $0.
The cost saving would be per SEAT, not per passenger. So, if we assume flights are on average 2/3 full, the saving would be a wooping 5 cents, not the paltry 3 cents.
In any case, getting rid of the life vest demonstration would be worth it for me without any further payment.
Does this mean I won’t have to listen to any more life-vest inflating speeches on my next AC-Jazz flight? Hooray!
I did a post about this ( http://www.dotcult.com/fixing-americas-problems )
where I say that they can save a ton more money by stopping the beverage service and just selling 20oz bottles in the terminal that I can bring onto the plane.
This would eliminate all the pop cans, those big carts, and probably eliminate at least 1 flight waitress.
The same goes for food.
Most of my plane flights are over land.
Though the stewardess still has to say:
In the unlikely event of a water landing, between Flagstaff and Phoenix, where the nearest body of water is in California, your seat back may be used as a flotation device.
Every flight I’ve taken in the last several years in the US has had seat cushions that can be used for floatation, not life vests. Still, it wouldn’t take much to make me give up a lfie vest, because almost none of my flights are over water of any size. A flight across an ocean (or even the Great Lakes) would be a totally different matter…
I think the airline’s concern is more about theft than fuel; the fuel cost is probably is lame excuse
Why don’t the airlines just offer discount tickets for people who weigh less than what the FAA calculates each passenger to weigh and is used for the weights and balances calculation of the aircraft? By purchasing the discount tickets, the passenger would need to be subjected to a discreet weigh in during the check in process.