Originally Posted by
DenverBrian
Almost all cases of airplane accidents are catastrophic, so you'd never know if these flying objects were the actual cause of death. And people taking their carry-ons, blocked exits, and smoke likely contribute far more to slow evacuations than people taking tablets ever will.
Not to mention the ever-increasing numbers of low-mobility people who are allowed to fly. Almost all flights these days include several wheelchair-bound or extremely slow moving elders. An evacuation is going to be slowed far more by these people trying to exit than tablets ever will.
I'd postulate that if the worry is safety and "what if" in case of an incident, there are dozens of worry points that are higher priority than whether a particular piece of electronics is a tablet or a laptop.
1) Depending on your definition of "accident", that first statement is simply not true. Not all accidents are crashes, and even if we limit the definition to crashes, a lot of them have survivors.
2) The safety concern has less to do with evacuation, and more to do with a heavy object flying around and knocking into people's heads.
3) Generally speaking, laptops are heavier than tablets. Generally speaking, heavier objects are more likely to do damage when getting tossed around. FAs can't start policing every single one of the items individually, nor can the FAA amend its policy every time a new type of computer/phone/tablet hybrid hits the market.
The line had to be drawn somewhere. Phones are lightweight, laptops are (mostly) heavy, and the tablet is somewhere in between. I'm glad that the line was drawn so that tablets are allowed, as opposed to banning everything except for phones.