FlyingEgghead

I don't exactly mean different rules for customers and employees. I mean that even when the plain meaning of a posted sign appears to bind employees (here FAs), it actually doesn't. It's like seeing an employee not wash in a restroom that has the sign "employees must wash hands before returning to work", then being told there are exceptions in the employee handbook where they are allowed to ignore the sign.

justhere

Except the sign isn't plain in meaning. It's most likely because that position on the aircraft is a duty station and therefore an FA has to be there. But FA's, no matter how good they are, cannot be in two places at once. Therefore, when performing other required duties, they won't be in the seat until they are. The sign doesn't mean if an FA isn't sitting there the moment the plane starts to taxi that all aboard are doomed for all eternity and the plane is going to crash. It simply means that one of the FA's is required to be in that seat at some point before takeoff and needs to be there at some point before landing. It also doesn't mean that passengers should police the FA's when they don't really understand why a sign is where it is and why it's there.

FlyingEgghead

1. The sign says, "Seat must be occupied during taxi, takeoff, and landing."
2. At a given moment, the plane is taxiing.
3. At that moment, the seat is not occupied.
Therefore, the plain meaning of the sign is being violated. To me, it doesn't get any plainer than that.
This reasoning assumes that there are other duties that supersede during taxi and excuse a violation of the sign. (In fact there are, but we are discussing what should be understood from the sign alone.) This is begging the question, and then any sign requiring FAs to be in a specific place could be rendered meaningless with the dodge that there might be another duty and they "cannot be in two places at once". Your reasoning would equally well apply during takeoff and landing as well as taxi, and does not explain how a reader would know that only the taxi phase has (nonemergency) exceptions.
This isn't dispositive because safety rule violations that don't cause a crash can still be real and punishable.
This would be the plain meaning if the sign read simply, "Seat must be occupied during takeoff and landing." But taxi is included too.
I agree it's not a good idea to police in real time. However, look at it this way: The vast, vast majority of FA obligations are not posted in the form of signs plainly visible to pax. For some reason, this one is (or appears to be). A thoughtful pax staring at that sign could easily reason: The sign doesn't have to be there for FAs to know the rule, since they are already trained to remember many other rules. So perhaps the sign is there because the FAA wants the pax to notice if it's violated and report it after the fact.

It makes further sense because jump seat occupancy is a very clever way to (implicitly) enable pax to collectively verify that the flight has the required number of FAs. Otherwise, a pax trying to count FAs could never be sure they didn't miss one. But the jump seat rules make it so that if the airline tries to fly short an FA, this will turn into a locally visible violation in the form of an empty jump seat. A beautiful piece of safety process engineering.

Dr. HFH

The reason is undoubtedly that the FAA requires the sign.


Now you're way off into the realm of speculation.


A passenger walking around the plane counting FAs? Ever seen that happen? Neither have I.


So when you see an empty seat in the Y cabin during taxi, you know that the only possible reason is that the flight is short an FA, right? No other possible explanation??

justhere

OMG!

1. The sign isn't for passengers to follow or interpret
2. You are taking the sign out of context of the FAR's.
3. How would you know it's out of context from the FAR's? You wouldn't. See #1 .
4. How would you know that #1 applies? Try sitting in the jumpseat. I'm sure you'll learn quickly
5. I think many of us must have missed the part where we are undercover agents for the FAA
6. By your own admission, the FA was in the seat for the very last part of the taxi. The sign doesn't say "for the entire duration of the taxi procedure".

AA100k

If you need to be asked twice about Emergency Row duties maybe you don’t belong there.

mvoight

Ok, then, the sign is for the FAs, right.
So, why do they need a reminder of this specific rule?

justhere

Are you actually arguing that the sign isn't for FA's? It's either for passengers or flight crew. As passengers cannot use that seat, at least not during taxi, takeoff, and landing, and as passengers are not in the business of enforcing FAR's, who else would the sign be for other than the flight crew?

So why do they need a reminder? I don't know? Why visually manage anything? Pilots fly all the time. Why do they need checklists? If I were to make an educated guess, there's one type rating for this Airbus family and the A319, A320, etc don't have that jumpseat (IIRC). So a good reminder to the FA's who might not have flown an A321 in a while, that if that is their duty station, they have to sit there for taxi, takeoff, and landing. But as already pointed out, they have other duties that they are permitted to be up and about during taxi. They just need to be back in that seat at some moment before taxi is over and takeoff begins.

saunders111

This seems like a bit of a flawed approach to aviation safety. My understanding is that aviation safety is largely based on conscientiously taking actions that may seem useless, because one time in some very large N the actions will be vital. Flotation aids for example: not needed on 99.9999 (and probably a few more nines) percent of flights. And yet carried at vast cumulative expense on every flight. Are you really saying you wouldn't report a plane with no life jackets on board if you discovered it after landing at the end of an overseas flight, because "it's not that big a deal and time to move on"? Because that seems to be the implication of your last sentence.

Confusedly,
saunders111

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

On some airlines the pilot announces "flight attendants be seated for take off" so presumably they can be up and about during taxi. Most of the time FAs have been seated well before the pilot announces from them to prepare for takeoff, which I presume is an indication that if not already seated they should take their seat immediately. Presumably most FAs don't want to be up and about during taxi other than to collect any service items and do a final safety check.

msr0013

Same topic but different aircraft. I once was on a CRJ, either PSA or Air Wisconsin, where rather than sit down for takeoff the FA braced herself by leaning back against the galley work area and pressed her feet against the bulkhead. I witnessed it all from the first row. Never seen that any other time, before or since. 😂