Here’s a great idea I came across today while walking the aisles of the exhibition hall at the Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas being held in Seattle this week.
A company called Belt-Tech has developed a way of making aircraft seat belts out of a conductive yarn that incorporates Real Time Information (RTI) technology. When the seat belt is buckled it sends a message to a light or a display screen so flight attendants no longer have to wake passengers up to check if they’ve got their seat belt buckled.
It seems that so far only one airline has placed an order for these belts for planes that won’t be delivered until 2015. But here’s betting that soon this type of seat belt will be standard issue.
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That’s actually one of the options they are proposing. Flight attendants could stand at the front, look on the screen to see who is not buckled up and go over to them – or call them out on the public address system. (“5B – buckle up!”)
Well. If these lights could indicate, which seatbelts are not fastened. How much more difficult would it be, to transmit these sensor-signals to the planes IT-system? So that the attendants can stand in the end of the cabin, and read which seatbelts are not fastened, on sscreen?
Then just walk through the cabin, and tell the appropriate travellers to fasten their seatbelts, while briefly checking the rest ?
What a fun idea. Not that anyone has ever woken me up to check my seatbelt, but this would make it easier on flight attendants all around IMO.
That’s a great idea. I like it.
but the FA would still have to check the passengers because imagine they could have the seatbelt fastened but just sitting on it ..