Buckle Your Seat Belt And Stop Whining

I used to pack a smoke hood in my carry-on luggage. I knew that most passengers survive a plane crash on impact but that many die before they can escape the toxic smoking fuselage of an airplane. But I didn’t pack a smoke hood for the trip that ended with a safe landing at San Francisco International Airport on Friday.

I figured my old smoke hood had outlived its shelf life. My husband, Wesley J. Smith, bought it for me in 1994 on the release of “Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety,” a book he co-authored with Ralph Nader.

Also, flying is safer than it used to be. Although a regional carrier crash in Buffalo, N.Y., killed 50 people in 2009, there hasn’t been a fatal accident with a major American airline in more than a decade. (For the record, Asiana Airlines is a South Korean carrier.)

Credit federal safety regulations for reducing seat flammability and the danger of seat collapse inside the Boeing 777 jetliner. Those advances allowed Asiana Flight 214 passengers to get out of the wreckage.

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