Plane w/ hole makes emergency landing; my paranoid question

ArthurDent

Fri, Jul 25 2008, 6:44 am

A quantas jet made an emergency landing after what passengers heard was a loud crack which created a hole in the plane. It was a Hong Kong to Melbourne flight, diverted to the Philippines. Thank G-d, everyone is safe.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/......html

My question is: when those oxygen masks fall down from the overhead stow, are there more masks than there are seats in each row? I know it's paranoid to think about, but they always say, "Put the mask on yourself before helping small children, etc." But I wonder, if there already are three people sitting in my row, but I've got a lap child also, is there going to be an extra mask for my child? I somehow doubt it.

baba

Fri, Jul 25 2008, 6:48 am

When flying elal, we can never book our seats online because we fly with a baby. We have to call them up and they give us the specific seats that carry the extra mask. So yes, they do have extra ones in specific seats. If there are a lot of small children, they have to put in extra ones. But if you're so worried, just confirm with your airline that your sitting in a seat with 2 masks.

ArthurDent

Fri, Jul 25 2008, 6:56 am

mummy-bh wrote:

Yes, there are more masks than seats. I dont know how many but I have seen 4 masks on a row with 3 seats and 2 on row of 3 seats.

When I flew with my infant twins I was not allowed to sit on the same row as my husband for this reason, as we would each be holding one baby.

That's good to know except I've seen plenty of times (and have flown myself a few times) where there were more than one lap child in a single row and nobody said boo about it.

baba wrote:

I think you're absolutely right about being proactive and confirming with the airline myself. I should get into the habit of doing that (but there's sometimes that I'm reluctant to give into all sorts of paranoid concerns that I have and wonder how much histadlus should I really have to do about everything and whether or not it's just going to lead to more paranoia on my part). But I've also flown ElAl with a lap child, and whether booking online, with a travel agent (who knew we requested a bassinet), or with a booking agent, noone has ever addressed the mask issue with us. In fact, we flew from Israel to the US 2 years ago and had our baby in a bassinet along and two other mothers sat in my row in the bulkhead, one with a lapchild and another with a lapchild and bassinet. That means they would have needed six masks for that row.

cindy324

Fri, Jul 25 2008, 9:24 am

There are more. I was flying with my 20 month old with my friend and her baby and her DH. They seated me and her next to a stranger, and her DH in the next row. The flight attendant came around and wanted to move on of us, because there were only 4 oxygen masks and 5 of us in the row. At the end , my friend handed her DD to her DH.

Of course, this was like 10 years ago, so I hope things changed for the better.