May 24, 2009|By Catharine Hamm | Catharine Hamm,Tribune Newspapers
Question:: I was on a Southwest flight recently, and the flight attendant said that folks could not put their laptops in the seat-back pocket. Why not?
Answer: : Consider the glove box in your car. It was designed to hold the operating manual and maybe the occasional work order for maintenance or repair. It wasn't designed to hold an accordion file of coupons and recipes, two tire gauges (in case one breaks, you know), a bottle of Excedrin, a "break-the-window-if-you're-drowning" hammer, hand lotion, 65,000 napkins and a copy of The Time Traveler's Wife.
One day, that little compartment in my car is going to shout, in whatever language plastic uses, "I can't take it anymore!" And then it will explode like a rocket on the Fourth of July.
Likewise, a Southwest seat-back pocket is designed to hold safety information, a magazine or two and an airsick bag - in total, about 3 pounds of stuff. A seat-back pocket is not an approved storage space.
In the end, storage is really all about safety, which is what flight attendants are charged with.
Federal Aviation Administration regulations dealing with what we can put where "essentially say that each article of carry-on baggage must be stowed under a seat or in a compartment that's placarded for its maximum weight and able to provide proper restraint for anything that's stored inside it," said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the FAA. The seat-back pocket isn't one of those places.
And a seat-back pocket also isn't a trash receptacle, so if you have litter, give it to the flight attendant. Putting your used tissues, candy wrappers and packets of mayo in there slows the cabin cleaning process.
That's important on quick turnarounds, especially for Southwest, where the average ground time is 25 minutes. That may sound like a luxury of time, but in just shy of half an hour, passengers disembark, the cabin and lavatories are cleaned, the seat belts are arranged on the seats, the plane gets its provisions and the new passengers get on and find a seat, said Marilee McInnis, Southwest spokeswoman.
