Passenger Banned For Inflating Life Vest During Safety Demo—Police Meet Him On Arrival

A Jetstar passenger watched the safety demonstration, pulled the handle to inflate his own life vest, and sat there with it ballooning around his neck. There’s video, and it ends with him surrounded by police. He made it to his destination, and law enforcement met the aircraft in Adelaide. He’s now banned from flying Jetstar and Qantas. The video was shared by with the caption, “Apparently your not supposed to copy them!” The man is identified as Hugh Lovett, traveling from Sydney to Adelaide on Friday evening, October 16. His brother Blake is beside him with the safety card. The passenger described himself as copying the crew, and says he thought it would be funny. The Man Was Still Allowed To Fly Much of the commentary on the video is people explaining how police took him off the aircraft, and that he couldn’t fly because his seat no longer had a life jacket. Anothre claim is that passengers missed connections, but Jetstar doesn’t do a ton of connecting business. They generally don’t through-check bags even on most of their own flights. And while they have a significant operation in Adelaide, the six planes they base there aren’t going to yield much of a connecting operation. Jetstar’s reason for the ban is misuse of emergency equipment. We have zero tolerance for behaviour that puts the safety of our customers and crew at risk. How Did He Get A Life Vest In The First Place? He got the life vest the same way a passenger would get one during an emergency: they’re stored within reach, generally under or beside the seat. Pulling the inflation handle releases compressed gas from a cylinder. Letting the air back out doesn’t refill the cylinder. The used vest needs to be replaced with a serviceable one or dealt with under the airline’s approved procedures. You can’t just deflate it, stuff it back into its pouch, and treat it as ready for the next passenger. There’s a reason the safety demonstration tells you when to inflate it. As I’ve written about before, an inflated vest restricts movement inside the cabin. If the cabin fills with water, its buoyancy can pin someone against the ceiling and prevent them from swimming down to an exit. Wearing it and inflating it are different steps. This Was Infuriating And Also A Little Bit Funny People find the joke funny, but are also angry about using emergency equipment for content. Still, four police officers seemed like overkill. “guess the police are just making sure he completes all the steps” “wow bro, you’re really going places with all those likes… you just ain’t going to those places in a plane anymore.” “Probably a favour being blacklisted from Jetstar anyway” “Good to know they work!” Then there’s the exchange where someone asks whether getting blacklisted was worth 2,000 likes. The account replies, “2000 likes in the first hour mind you”. In response: “this changes everything”. Main Character Syndrome Popping the vest in the cabin isn’t the same as the slide, but it evokes Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who grabbed a beer and deployed an emergency slide to peace out from the airline in 2010 – both had unnecessary inflation of emergency equipment to make a memorable departure from the aircraft. The closer comparison for treating emergency equipment as something to try is the Xiamen Airlines passenger who deployed a slide because she was “just curious”. That flight actually was canceled, with 112 passengers needing other arrangements. And I covered an American Airlines passenger who told a flight attendant to “shut up” during the safety demonstration and wound up leaving the aircraft. Topics on this page