My wife has been traveling on jets more than 50 years, ever since she was a young child.
For the first time yesterday, she became seriously ill on a flight. She felt light-headed and nauseous, and deplaned her flight at a scheduled stop, admitting herself to a hospital.
After conducting a battery of tests, doctors determined she was fine. My wife hadn’t had much to eat before flying and also is recovering from a broken wrist, so she figured that perhaps worry and an empty stomach conspired against her in flight.
Then a friend related a similar experience on a flight between Seattle and Chicago where she fainted twice and spent much of the flight on the plane’s galley floor, recuperating. It turns out, she had received the wrong dosage of blood-pressure medicine. Once off the plane at O’Hare, my friend felt fine.
One of the medical staff in Chicago told my friend that her experience wasn’t uncommon, that about 15 passengers into O’Hare suffer similar conditions every day.
I Googled the issue and learned that fainting on jet flights isn’t uncommon, in part because planes are only “de-pressurized” to the equivalent of between 5,000 and 8,000-foot elevation.
In other words, there’s not a lot of oxygen on a jet, so if you are dehydrated or very hungry or suffering low blood pressure or experiencing a range of other health conditions, you might find yourself feeling seriously ill, then pass out.
Most normal adults don’t lose consciousness in the course of a day and would find fainting on board a plane upsetting, maybe even traumatic.
So it follows that perhaps during the required “on-board safety briefing” before a flight, attendants — in the course of telling you what to do in the event of a water landing and other improbable circumstances – might just recommend that passengers stay dehydrated and eat the free, crummy snacks provided?
Surely the airlines know that keeping their passengers watered and fed helps avoid some scenes that would very uncomfortable for passengers and their crew. Perhaps, in fact, this is why some snacks and drinks are provided free.
It’s a fair guess that airlines don’t advise us to stay hydrated and fed because such an announcement might create fear of flying, cutting into ticket sales. Mostly what passengers hear on flights suggests that everything will be A-OK as long as we keep our seat belts fastened and mind the flight attendants.
That’s not the whole story, but it’s the one airlines would rather you hear.
Here’s another: Jets would be safer if passenger seats faced backward, instead of forward. Positioned this way, passengers would be considerably more cushioned during the event of a crash.
The airline industry knew this decades ago but chose to risk passenger safety, figuring most travelers like to face the direction their heading and explaining reverse seating would raise that old bugaboo, the safety of air travel.
These are just two facts an airline passenger can learn on the Internet today. They’re a stark reminder that airlines are first and foremost businesses, a vehicle for making money. Passenger safety and health is a concern, surely, but not paramount to profits.
Now consider that the criminal who recently became U.S. president and his mega-rich computer titan buddies, decide to start charging extra for the truth online, or charging exorbitant fees for it.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg already has decided he won’t check facts. But certainly some people using Facebook would like fact-checking. Like getting a meal on an airline flight, will the truth online become an additional service for which we will be charged extra?
A handful of billionaires have effectively bought the USA. How long before they start buying up the truth?