Seatbelt sign on, Sit Down!

[Luke A]

Hi all.
Thought this would be a fun weekend topic to chat about. Have you ever been on a flight where the cabin crew ‘have not’, had to ask passengers to sit down until the seat belt sign is turned off? This seems to happen on nearly every flight I travel on. I like to just keep watching the view outside until the doors are open and everyone starts to move. I seem to get out fast enough that way anyhow.

[Greg McDonald]

Don't you realise Luke that if you pop your seatbelt off the second the aircraft touches the ground then stand in the aisle the second the chocks are in like the rest of the cattle that you get off .000005 milliseconds earlier than everyone else? Shame on you!!

[Ray P.]

I think you will never see a time where people will remain seated until the seatbelt light turns off. That said, from my experience, passengers generally appear to unlatch their seatbelts the instant they hear the engines spool down. So to me, it's not really a big deal.

[David Ramsay]

I recall landing once at JFK and a number of pax standing up while we were still taxiing.

The captain was real ****ed off with them. "We are stopped between two active runways at one of the busiest airports in the world and we ain't moving 'til you lot sit down!!"

[Gareth Forwood]

The Virgin Atlantic crew on my flight from Hong Kong back in 2006 had a good technique to keep everyone seated. As we turned off the runway, the pilot mentioned that several of the cleaning staff had called in sick and asked for people to volunteer to help clean the aircraft by standing up before the seatbelt light went off. Needless to say, no one stood.

[David N]

I prefer to wait, still get to the baggage carousel at the same time, if I need to go there at all.

When I went to Newcastle on JQ , was lucky enough to sit up front, while just sitting there watching the door being opened and everyone else fighting to get there things behind us, to FA hands everyone up front there hand luggage and lets us off first before anyone else can leave.

[Steve Crook]

Slightly off topic I know but I will always remember a flight where the cabin crew weren't in their seats with seatbelts fastened when they should have been. It was a flight from Bombay (as it was then) to Singapore via Chennai (which it wasn't called then). It was an Air India flight but being operated with an Indian Airlines A300. I was sitting at the exit row at the front of the rear part of the cabin - actually the economy cabin was long with no internal bulkheads to break it into smaller sections. The female cabin crew wore saris. As we turned on to the runway for take-off a couple of the female cabin crew were still on the feet at the front of the economy section. As the pilot gunned the engines for take off the 2 cabin crew were catapulted down the aisle with their agility greatly restricted by the rather tight saris. One threw herself into a spare seat towards the front of the cabin. The other found herself being unceremoniously and very ungracefully bounced down the aisle with a less than calm look on her face. Just as she was about to fall flat on her face she was able to fall into a spare seat in the same row that I was sitting.

[Steve Crook]

I flew to Melbourne on Qantas a couple of months ago. We had quite a wait between pushback and take off in Sydney. At some point towards the back a passenger, or some passengers, must have stood up to retrieve something from the overhead locker. A flight attendant made a PA announcement advising that all passengers needed to be seated and wearing their seatbelts. During the delay the captain had been making regular announcments updating the flight status. His next announcement was a very stern warning about standing up while the seatbelt sign was illuminated. I later overhead a flight attendant in the adjacent galley to me express dismay to her peers about the passenegers standing. It just came home to me how, by and large, this behaviour is a rarity here and how safety conscious airline crews are.

[Kirk C]

When i was working on the ramp, waiting for a JQ flight to arrive from Bali, the A320 was coming up the line quite quick, as soon as the stop came up on the NIGS, he jumped on the brakes, the nose came down, compressing the strut almost all the way.

I chucked the chocks in, and plugged in the head seat, only to hear the captain saying

"That will teach them to stay seated"

I know allot of people would question this as being dangerous, and he could have injured some one, however the rules state that you have to remain seated till the light goes out, and this could have happened any where in the taxi, ie a Vehicle driving in front of the aircraft would have resulted in the same outcome.

Stay seated!