An official with Air Canada's regional carrier Jazz says the airline is removing life vests from all its planes to save weight and fuel.
Jazz spokeswoman Manon Stuart said Thursday that Transport Canada regulations allow airlines to use flotation devices instead of life vests, provided the planes remain within 50 miles of shore.
Safety cards in the seat pockets of Jazz aircraft now direct passengers to use the seat cushions as flotation devices.
Stuart says Jazz is a transcontinental carrier that doesn't fly over the ocean.
Jazz planes do fly over the Great Lakes and along the Eastern seaboard from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Boston, Massachusetts, and to New York.
Stuart says all of Jazz's flights operate within 50 miles from shore. She says the airline operates 880 flights daily to 85 destinations in North America and says the number of flights that operate over water are minimal.
A commercial-style life vest weighs roughly a pound (half a kilogram), meaning about 50 pounds (25 kilograms) would be saved by removing them from a Dash-8 aircraft with 50 seats.
cnn.com
Hmmm..interesting. I wonder what is their procedure on Infants,children, aged who will have difficulty clinging on to "flotation" device?..50miles out or otherwise. certain budget carriers also practice not more than 30mins away from shore & a suitable alternate aerodrome due safety equiptment issues. But CAAS insist lifevests be onboard.Whew!
liddat they shud hv parachutes wat.
not everyone is conversant with the use of parachutes. Problem wz over water is that one can gets dragged down by the parachute & risk drowning.
also the DH ,even if its possible to consider jumping off, the aircraft would have to maintain at least a 10,000 feet altitude due oxygen/pressure problems for human beings ,also it would have a problem with flight control as all,if not most passengers would have to jump from the back, since the twin props are infront..that would cause the twin props acft to pitch up & perhaps stall....to cut a long story short, the civilian acft is not design for this purpose.
At the end of the day, the acft can adopt any measures but the passengers ultimately make their own decision whether to fly with this carrier or not. or the carrier can impose weight control on their crew. (man, if u had seen some of these ang moh cabin crew...built like trucks!)