There’s Much Turbulence Over Keeping Fliers Buckled Up

A string of injuries caused by severe air turbulence is raising fresh concerns about the safety of unbuckled airline passengers.

As a result, the captain’s familiar request to keep your seat belt fastened throughout the flight, now voluntary, may soon become federal law.

But the thorny issue of how to enforce such a requirement - and how to convince jaded passengers of its necessity - is still up in the air.

A newly appointed Federal Aviation Administration task force is considering strengthening current regulations, which require passengers to buckle up during taxi, takeoff, landing and whenever the “fasten seat belt” sign is lighted by the cockpit crew. A controversial exception is children under 2, who may be held on laps.

The FAA’s move was prompted by a rash of incidents involving rough air.

In July, an American Airlines plane headed to Puerto Rico from Florida returned to Miami when it hit unexpected turbulence; 26 of 161 passengers were treated for minor injuries. During a one-week stretch in June, 40 passengers on three flights were hurt when their planes encountered unusually bumpy conditions.

Such turbulence can be caused by atmospheric pressure, jet streams, weather or other planes. A particularly dangerous, albeit rare, condition is so-called “clear air turbulence.” Unlike storm-related turbulence, clear air turbulence can’t be seen or predicted by pilots. Therefore, injuries typically occur while the seat belt sign is turned off during an otherwise smooth flight.

Turbulence is rarely a threat to aircraft except at extremely low altitudes, where there’s little room to maneuver. It is, however, the bane of white-knuckle fliers and the leading cause of injuries in non-fatal accidents.

From 1984 to 1993, FAA studies show turbulence caused injuries to more than 1,000 passengers and flight attendants. Broken legs and feet were most common, followed by back and spine injuries. In all but one of 65 accident reports from 1982 to 1993, injured passengers weren’t wearing seat belts.

The biggest hurdle to increased seat belt use is passenger complacency, FAA and airline officials say.

“We’ve all been on flights where the moment the seat belt sign goes off, you hear the ‘click, click, click’ of belts being unfastened,” says Mike Overly of the Aviation Safety Institute. “The prevailing attitude is, once you’re at altitude, you’re safe.”

That living-room mentality is exacerbated by the common airline practice of turning on the “fasten seat belt” sign in a not-always-successful attempt to keep passengers out of the aisles during meal service.

“One of the problems is that flight attendants are walking around the cabin,” says Diana Fairechild, a former flight attendant and author of “Jet Smart,” a book on healthy flying. “A lot of people think, ‘If she’s up, why can’t I be?”’

A mandatory airline seat belt law would require “aggressive enforcement if it’s going to be anything but a paper law,” says Overly. And that, airline officials say, could be difficult.

“We support the notion of seat belts being fastened at all times,” says American Airlines spokesman Al Becker. “But we’re not a law enforcement agency. In the real world, American Airlines is carrying 265,000 passengers a day … and I don’t know if you could achieve 100 percent compliance 100 percent of the time.”