Experience the reality

Air Safety Week, June 3, 2002

With respect to cramped seating for the humblest passenger, Harold Caplan has a modest suggestion. Caplan, a long-time observer on the industry whose published writings on accident investigations, air safety and such date back to at least 1953, suggests that airline officials themselves should occasionally fly economy class. In a speech Feb. 27, 2001, at the "Aircraft Interiors Expo 2001," Caplan suggested a voluntary program with the following features:

* Once each year, each airline board member and each line manager or chief pilot, each chief aircraft and engine designer, and each senior government safety regulator, should take a trip around the world seated in the cheapest part of the cabin.

* The individual should, whenever and wherever possible, be accompanied by spouse, partner, and children.

* The individual should participate in all procedures, to which the ordinary passenger peasantry is exposed (including the use of public transport to and from airports, queuing for check-in, queuing for security, immigration, customs and baggage retrieval)

* Use of executive or VIP lounges would be prohibited. The individual and partner/family would be treated throughout as ordinary passengers.

"No good purpose would be served by requiring staff at lower levels to accept [this] voluntary commitment," Caplan said. "They already know how it is."

Caplan predicts should any chief designer, regulator or airline board member be bold enough to accept this challenge, it would not take very long before things improved for all passengers and new designs began to be drawn on the backside of airsickness bags.

Caplan related that he is not the only one propounding this experience. He recalled the opening remarks at an "Air Passenger Rights' symposium May 10, 2001, in Lisbon, Portugal, by Claudio Costa Pereira, secretary general of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICASO). Pereira opined, "I would guess that most of us travel primarily in business class or first class. We might be wise to travel more often in economy class and reacquaint ourselves with conditions in the back of the aeroplane. We might even feel a bit of air rage ourselves at times."

Caplan related, "So far as I know, there has not been any follow up to his remarks, [which were] aimed mainly at government officials and regulators in Europe." >> Caplan, tel. 44 (0) 1932 781 200 <<