Originally Posted by
lhrsfo
My experience of UA vs European airlines is that UA is obsessed with the seat belt sign. They turn it off much later - usually at cruising altitude, they keep on turning it on throughout a flight, often forgetting to turn it off again and they turn it on usually at the top of the descent. The European airlines I fly all turn it off at about 10,000 feet, turn it on again around that level and rarely turn it on midflight, unless there really is turbulence.
The consequence of that is that on UA people mostly ignore the sign, whereas in Europe, if it's on, people obey it.
I'll go further -- it's not just Europe, it's pretty much every non US airline that I've flown on, which spans pretty much the world apart from South America. You're spot on about the consequence -- we're in boy who cried wolf territory.