There was no lifejacket on my flight – is this allowed?

Q On an internal flight in the US from Portland, Oregon, to Los Angeles, I did as I always do and felt under my seat for my lifejacket. Imagine my surprise to find that the holder was empty.

During the pre-flight safety briefing, all was revealed. No jackets were supplied. Instead we were advised to use our seat cushion as a flotation device. I checked, and found that the seat just had two diagonal elastic straps across the underneath through which one was supposed to put one’s arms.

It might have worked for a hour if you are young, fit and healthy. Certainly it is not something that would keep you afloat overnight or if you were unconscious. Is this now to be the norm on all flights?

Alan R

A Most internal flights over a large landmass such as the US are classed as “inland”. The Federal Aviation Authority applies that term to services that are not planned to go “beyond power-off gliding distance of the shore”.

The classification excuses the airlines the extra cost of buying overwater equipment and the fuel used to fly them.

Some flotation aid is required, because it is possible that pilots may choose to ditch the plane on water, as famously happened with US Airways flight 1549 from New York to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2015 (better known as “the miracle on the Hudson”), when both engines shut down shortly after take off from La Guardia airport. Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger planted the Airbus A320 in the Hudson River, and all 155 people on board survived the evacuation in near-freezing water.

In your case, the route between Portland and Los Angeles is entirely over land apart from possibly a very short spell over the Pacific before landing – presumably within the “power-off gliding distance” of the shore.

Many aircraft on US “inland“ flights are actually equipped with lifejackets: if the plane is sometimes used for, say, Caribbean flights or specific domestic routes such as Boston to Miami or Tampa to Houston – both of which are almost entirely over water. But big airlines can have aircraft which are never deployed on such routes, and yours was evidently one of them.

Fortunately, flying is so outstandingly safe that, to my knowledge, there has never been a case in which carrying lifejackets might have made a difference to survivability.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder