PANIC!
This morning I woke up to Radio 4's Today Programme where Ed (or was it Jonathan) was interviewing one of the passengers of a Ryanair flight that had descended rapidly after losing cabin pressure and had been diverted to Limoges. The incident must have been scary for the passengers.
What I found so interesting, listening to the interviews were the extreme differences between one of the passenger's response and that of Ryanair's CEO Michael O'Leary ;
Passenger: "well over 80 per cent of people on that flight knew they were going to die"... a lack of communication from cabin staff added to their "extreme fear".
The passenger then says "the general experience of the 140-odd passengers was that no oxygen was delivered through the oxygen masks to anyone...from where I was sitting I could see about 20 masks and only a few of them were inflating."
Michael O'Leary: The oxygen masks were working, the correct safety procedures were followed."
Two things strike me. First and most obviously the difference in language. The passenger's emotional language is a result of shock while O'Leary's is a product of experience and his expertise - this has happened before, etc, etc. That said O'Leary should have made more explicit how sorry he was something like this had happened when his turn came- though he would probably argue he was responding to the grilling he was getting at the time.
Second is the importance of training. Oxygen masks do not inflate when put on - yet most passengers believe otherwise - a universal assumption which airlines are pointing out in their safety briefs.
I also wonder how many people had watched the safety brief and read the card in front of them - this wouldn't made the situation less scary for the passengers but as Ripley and others suggest it would have made them more prepared in the event of an emergency.
For more useful information on the Ryanair flight read the excellent aviation blog Learmount