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Maybe you know the answer to this one; nobody else seems to. As my flight into Portland was coming in for a landing, a recording told passengers to return tray tables to the upright position and open all the window shades. The tray tables I get, but the window shade bit? Even the ex-flight attendant seated next to me couldn’t explain that. —Not-So-Frequent Flyer
My initial impression upon reading your message, Flyer, was that you’d confused the challenge of “nobody knows the answer” with the less rigorous “I asked one person and they didn’t know, so fuck it.” Snickering hubristically at your naïveté, I hopped online to begin my research, confident I’d be at the bar by lunchtime.
Days later, I am forced to concede that your question isn’t as easy as I’d supposed. Oh, plenty of people know why we’re required to open those shades on takeoff and landing—the problem is that all their answers are different.
Here’s what we do know: Opening the shades during crucial moments is not an official FAA regulation, like the prohibitions against guns, booze or—God forbid—Magic 8-Balls on the plane. It is, however, a popular entry on industry best-practices guides, so many (though not all) airlines have adopted it as corporate policy.
Unfortunately, best-practices guides seem to be short on explanations, so it’s hard to determine what prompted the rule in the first place. Some people say it’s so middle- and aisle-seat passengers can see out the window during the most exciting parts of the flight. (Some people are morons.) Others contend it’s to have extra pairs of eyes looking out for fires, loose bits of airframe or the odd gremlin. Still others, including some actual pilots, note that having passengers’ eyes already acclimated to outdoor light levels is helpful in an evacuation scenario.
The closest thing I found to a federal weigh-in comes from an official FAA document (a steamy potboiler on window shade malfunctions), which mentions in passing that being able to see out the exit-row windows prevents evacuees from unwittingly opening the emergency door onto a fire. This is probably as good as we’re going to get—especially since some of the aforementioned industry guidelines require opening exit-row window shades only.
But if it’s only about the emergency rows, why open all the shades? Well, there probably is some merit to the stuff about your eyes adjusting. And who knows, maybe some passenger really could spot an undetected fire. Most importantly, though: If there’s a gremlin out there tearing up the wing, do you really want to be the only poor bastard who can see it?
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
