Travel Security Lessons

I’m not a great fan of air travel, however whenever I fly I’m reminded of a lot of security and personal safety lessons that can be applied to everyday life. Having just returned from training/teaching in Israel, I thought I’d share some of these in this article. I’m not referring just to specific security issues, but to more general ones as well, that effect our day-to-day safety.

Firstly, planning and preparation is everything. When I fly and need to make connecting flights, I try to cut the layover time, so I’m not stuck in an airport for many hours waiting for my next flight; I don’t enjoy the process of travelling, and the shorter the time I spend engaged in it the better. At the same time, I don’t want to cut the time down so much that if my initial flight is delayed, I miss my connection. This means that I want to know the gate where I land, and the gate, where my connecting flight departs from, along with the gate that my plane lands at. Most airports present this information online, and in most cases, the flight numbers and the gates they depart from, etc. are the same day-to-day. This allows you to have a fairly good idea of where your plane will land, and the gate from which your connecting flight will take off; using the airport map, which can also be found online, you can have an idea of the route you will have to take, along with the time it will take you to make your connecting flight – I’ll also note bathrooms along the way, restaurants, shops, etc., in case I need any of these along the way. I’ll also, once landed, check on my phone that the gate hasn’t been “changed”, so that I’m not working with out-of-date information. This may seem a little over the top, but the 5 minutes it takes me to do this can cut down on a lot of anxiety when trying to make a connecting flight, if your initial flight was delayed.

Most airlines will allow you to check-in online before you fly; this speeds up the check-in process, and also allows you to select your seats. A 2011 study, based on 100 air crashes, (by Ed Galea of the University of Greenwich, London, UK), found that those passengers seated within 5 rows of an exit stood the best chance of surviving a crash. The study also showed that most people survive the initial impact of a crash, but if they don’t get off the plane in the first 90 seconds, their survival chances decrease significantly – being decisive, and starting to move as soon as the plane comes to rest (rather than waiting for cabin staff to instruct you), is your best survival option. It is also worth counting the seats to your nearest exit, so if the cabin is filled with smoke, you will be able to “feel” your way to safety. Another important choice to make involves footwear; you don’t want to be trying to walk across burning aviation fuel in your flip-flops. Also, think about and practice undoing your seatbelt – under stress and duress, we resort to normal actions/behaviors, and the seatbelts in our cars are released by pressing a button; this is something that many people do when involved in an air-crash, rather than pulling the clip to release the belt.

There are also lessons from air-travel that we can take and use in our day-to-day lives. When taking off or landing at night, the lights in the cabin will be dimmed. The reason for this is that if the plane crashes or was forced to make an emergency landing, etc., and passengers need to exit, they wouldn’t be subjected to night-blindness; something that would happen if they were moving from a well-lit, bright environment to a dark one, etc. This is something that you should note when leaving/exiting your car at night. If you have been driving with your headlights on, your eyes will take time to adjust when you park and switch them off. Waiting in your car for 10-15 seconds, with the central locking on, and checking your mirrors to get an understanding of what your environment looks like – and who may be in it – will give your eyes time to adjust, before leaving the relative safety of your vehicle.

The recent fire at the Grenfell Tower in White City (London, UK), served as a stark reminder that if you’re above a certain height, neither ladders or fire hoses will be able to reach you. You may like to stay on the upper floors of hotels to enjoy the views, but if you are too high, you risk your safety in the event of a fire. In developing countries, there may not even be a nearby fire service, or their equipment may be substandard. Because of this, you may want to make sure that your room is one that is closer to the ground than if you were staying in a Western hotel. It is also worth noting that the estimated time it takes to evacuate a floor may be woefully inadequate. On 9/11, it took nearly 2 hours for some people to evacuate the buildings – if you were on one of the higher floors, there were so many people on the floors below attempting to evacuate that the time to clear each level increased dramatically, the higher up you were. When staying in a hotel, make sure that you are not so high up that your ability to evacuate would be compromised. You may also want to consider taking a smoke escape mask/hood with you when you travel. Such an item may seem over the top, however in the event of a fire, this will give you about 25 minutes’ protection from smoke, and chemicals such as Hydrogen Cyanide (80% of people who die in fires do so from smoke and chemical inhalation).

Travelling can give us a good reminder of how to improve our safety precautions in other areas of our life, whether that is in improving our planning and preparation, or being reminded about the importance of fire-safety, etc.