Flight attendants struggle to pass safety message on

Deb Riechmann

Friday, Aug. 17, 2001 | 10:52 a.m.

If the airlines' preflight safety spiel were a Broadway show, it would have closed long ago.

Flight attendants face one tough audience when they go through their routine about emergency exits and seat cushions that float -- a reaction by passengers that worries officials who fear lifesaving information may be missed.

"It's pointless," said Drew Feldman, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., already a jaded passenger at age 17. "If you're going to crash on a plane, you're going to die."

Actually, chances of surviving an accident are fairly high. And interviews with survivors show that many have the presence of mind amid the chaos of an accident to do as they were told before takeoff.

The lectures, required since the early 1960s, often are ignored -- by people, like Feldman, who are certain they are doomed anyway if something goes wrong; by those who are convinced they are safe; and by those who think they have heard it all too many times.

To pique interest, some flight attendants are getting downright goofy.

"We have some flight attendants who travel with ukuleles and sing the flight safety message," said Linda Rutherford, speaking for Dallas-based Southwest Airlines. "We have some who do it while impersonating people like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Elvis.

"Some sing them -- like to the theme of the 'Beverly Hillbillies.' And we have some who have made them into a kind of rap."

In recent years, some airlines have started showing safety videos on small monitors above the seats. Others now begin safety demonstrations with a reminder to listen, or at least to stay quiet.

Officials are hard-pressed to prove that passengers who listen are more likely to live, but it is clear the message can sink in.

A 13-year-old girl on American Airlines Flight 1420, which overshot the runway after landing at Little Rock, Ark., in June 1999 and killed 11 people, told investigators she remembered from the briefing how to don the oxygen mask when it dropped down.

As it turned out, the mask did not work; she escaped through a crack in the plane as the rear of the aircraft burned.

A woman remembered from the briefing that the nearest exit was behind her but instead walked forward toward the light and out a hole in first class.

In all, 134 people survived.

In a 1991 collision at Los Angeles between USAir and Skywest planes, passengers credited a special preflight briefing for those sitting by an emergency exit with helping them get out. The accident killed 34 people; 67 survived.

A federal study this year found 96 percent of occupants survived domestic airplane accidents between 1983 and 2000. Even in serious accidents -- involving fire, serious injury and either substantial aircraft damage or destruction -- 56 percent lived.

The Federal Aviation Administration has run ads urging passengers to heed safety demonstrations and has worked with airlines to make the messages more effective.

Confidence in the safety of flying contributes to apathy about the briefings as well as the safety cards left for each passenger to look at.

"I feel comfortable on the plane," said Kevin Nesbitt, a 38-year-old salesman from Raleigh, N.C., who has flown hundreds of thousands of miles.

Even so, Nesbitt always counts the rows to the nearest exit. He said he feels guilty when he doesn't pay attention and sometimes feigns interest to set an example for less frequent flyers.

Not every passenger needs to be coaxed to pay attention.

"I'm not one to pull out the card, but I listen and I watch as they make their gestures," said Leslie Hankerson, an analyst for the Education Department in Washington.

Candace Kolander, a flight attendant and a safety officer of the Association of Flight Attendants union, cites reasons even for veteran fliers to pay attention: Exit doors are not in the same place on every plane, life vests don't all inflate the same way, and the more that passengers understand about emergency exits, floor lighting and oxygen masks, the faster everyone can get out.

She's noticed passengers seem more attentive after an airline crash has been in the news, but interest soon wanes.

Sometimes when her business-class passengers aren't listening, she playfully reprimands them: "Hello? Hey, I'm still up here."