Travel hacks are one of the industry’s best developments in recent memory. From hacks that will help you get a free lunch, beat ‘recline rage’, or ensure you can sit next to your pals using Mia Khalifa’s dirty trick, all of them are interesting but some are more successful than others.
Few, however, are as potentially dangerous as this one. After spreading like wildfire on TikTok in recent days, the hack — shared by alexisburnaby1711 amongst many others — suggests that flyers undo their seatbelt, lift their feet up onto their seat, and reattach the seatbelt around their ankles. Watch her example below…
@alexisburnaby1711 idk the @ but ily
♬ Murder On The DanceFloor – speduqaudio
As a very tall man with very-far-from-sturdy knees, doing this would be impossible, let alone comfortable. However, I want to make it clear that what I’m about to say comes from genuine concern over passenger safety, rather than plain and simple jealousy over other flyers’ enviable flexibility and pint-size nature…
While many commenters on this video called the hack ‘life-changing’ and ‘so smart’ — given that it undoubtedly will provide a comfortable seating and sleeping position for those with the correct proportions to enjoy it — they fail to overlook one very fundamental fact: your seatbelt is there for a reason, and designed for attachment around the waist for an even better reason…
Airplane emergencies are, thankfully, very rare, but they do happen. What’s far more common, however, is bone-breaking turbulence. If you were to encounter such turbulence, not having your seatbelt on at all would be bad enough; you’re liable to fly across the cabin, knocking against the plane’s internal architecture as you go.
If you’re tied in by the ankles, however, you risk flying out of your seat in a similar motion to when people go over the handlebars of their bike, launching your head forward into the seat ahead of you which could, in extreme cases, be fatal. Or, if the turbeuelcne is really severe, you risk the rest of your body launching away while your feet stay firmly strapped in place, with dislocations galore only a matter of moments away…
This only covers turbulence, let alone more severe incidents such as unexpectedly opened doors or one of Boeing’s fast-piling-up engineering issues… I don’t mean to be a bore by saying this — everyone’s entitled to get as comfy as possible in ever-shrinking aeroplane seats — but try to keep safety front of mind…