It reads like an April Fool’s joke. “British Airways plane banned from flying because seats are ‘too comfortable’,” read the headline. “A British Airways flight from Milan to London was blocked from taking off by the Italian government on Monday, thanks to an unlikely perpetrator. The seats were too comfortable,” the newspaper claimed. I called British Airways to get to the bottom of the matter. “Uh, it’s true,” one senior executive said to me, unsure whether to be happy or embarrassed.
BA Flight 575 from Milan Linate Airport to Heathrow was grounded last month after inspectors from Italy’s aviation authority carried out a surprise inspection of the Airbus A320. They discovered that the seats in the exit row next to the wings had cushions that exceeded the prescribed thickness. The seat cushions in the exit rows are thinner than in other rows to make it as easy and quick as possible for passengers to get out in an emergency. Before the plane could take off, BA had to find smaller seat cushions for the exit row.
It is not without reason that aviation is the most strictly regulated form of transport. What other rules and regulations may you not be aware of? These are my favorites:
Quick exit
The number of passengers on a plane is not determined by Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary’s determination to squeeze every pound out of every square inch of the cabin, but by the number of seats, which in turn is determined by the number of doors that open has an airplane. . The more doors, and the larger they are, the more seats. Why? Because airlines and manufacturers must demonstrate that a full aircraft can be evacuated within 90 seconds with half of the doors unusable.
The importance of this was illustrated in January when all 379 passengers and crew disembarked through three doors of a Japan Airlines Airbus A350, which caught fire in about two minutes as it landed at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. Moments later it went up in flames.
Crew cut
The number of cabin crew is not determined by the level of service an airline wants to provide – more for more attentive service, fewer for less – but rather by a minimum of one flight attendant for every 50 seats, regardless of whether those seats are occupied.
Do not be dumb
You might think that the cabin lights are dimmed and you are told to keep the blinds open when taking off and landing at night, so that cabin crew can see out in the event of an accident – and to make it easier to see the emergency lighting in the cabin that points the way to an emergency exit. But that’s only part of the story. Dimming the lights also helps passengers’ eyes adjust more quickly to a dark or smoke-filled cabin.
Blindly
The blinds are kept open to ensure that firefighters can look into the cabin in the event of a fire and identify any flames on board and their location.
Caught short
There are no rules about the number of bathrooms an airplane must have. BA recently reduced the number of bathrooms on its short-haul jets, so go before you go.
Batteries not included
Airlines must adhere to a minimum equipment list. If a major item is missing or defective, the aircraft cannot fly and there is a strict deadline for repair or replacement. Something as seemingly small as a battery-operated exit light above a gull-wing door should be checked before every flight. “If the power goes out, passengers should still be able to see where the nearest exit is,” an engineer told Telegraph Travel.
Singles club
All jets must be able to fly on one engine. Yes, once airborne, a 550-ton Airbus A380 superjumbo can fly on one engine. Single-engine operation helps determine a flight’s route and the airports it would use if it needs to be diverted.
Feeling the heat
There is no set temperature for an airplane cabin. It could be anywhere from 18C to 30C. Airlines raise the temperature to encourage passengers to go to sleep and lower it when it’s time to wake up. Airplanes can be heated by using hot air “bled” from the engines and even by harvesting the heat generated by the batteries that power the aircraft’s computer systems.
A breath of fresh air
Airlines are not required to install individual vents above each seat. Many Asian airlines do not offer these on widebody jets. The air must be filtered every three minutes using HEPA filters, which are also used in a hospital operating room. This means that you are unlikely to contract airborne viruses on board, but you could catch a cold during travel due to the constant temperature fluctuations.
Window coverings
You may have noticed a small triangular sticker above the window next to your seat. This indicates that this is the best window to view the moving parts and controls of the wing. The sticker is there to help cabin crew observe the condition of the wing or an engine as quickly as possible in the event of an emergency.
Tipping the scales
Cabin crew tell passengers to ‘take the assigned seat’ before takeoff, not because they want to split up families, but because they have used average passenger weight data to distribute weight evenly across the plane before takeoff and countries. Every five years, some airlines, including Air New Zealand and Korean, conduct random, voluntary weight checks on passengers in the countries they fly to, based on which they determine an average weight. Passengers are invited to step on the scale at check-in.
False rules
Even though we are all told to turn off our cell phones, some private flights allow cell phone calls and there is little evidence that cell phone interference has affected an aircraft’s performance or navigation.
Screen time
There is no legal size for an airplane window, but some manufacturers like to use larger windows as a marketing ploy. This is despite the fact that some airlines hate windows because the core is made of glass, which is very heavy. Emirates boss Tim Clark has speculated that airlines will do away with windows and use cameras on the fuselage to project images onto a screen instead of the window. That means you could choose which view you wanted to see: the one from the left or the one from the right.