F2Pool Co-founder Wang Chun: Mandatory Seatbelt Use on Flights Should Be Canceled
Chun advocates for ending the mandatory use of seatbelts on commercial flights and simultaneously discontinuing the use of in-cabin activity space suits, arguing that both create high-friction rituals for extremely low-probability protections.
He wrote that in the past decade, the U.S. has seen serious injuries approximately once every 400 billion flight miles; most of the time, passengers are asleep with seatbelts hidden under blankets, yet crew members insist on checking under the blankets, which is particularly resented in first and business class. Official U.S. travel data presents another perspective: from 2003 to 2023, there were a total of 675 serious injuries in domestic aviation, averaging about 32 per year; in 2023, 33 injuries corresponded to 773 billion passenger miles. In turbulence-related incidents, the injury rate for crew members is higher than that for passengers. These figures describe the overall aviation injury rate and do not individually prove that the risk of turbulence after unbuckling seatbelts is zero.
The second tweet extends the same logic to space travel. He states that IVA space suits, which have been in service for over 60 years, have had “zero lifesaving, and real emergencies have not been resolved,” yet they occupy a significant amount of training time, now more like symbols and identities. He suggests that future large crewed spacecraft should have independent pressurized refuge compartments to give time back to on-orbit work. Public space history does not align with this: in 1971, three astronauts on Soyuz 11 were not wearing life suits and died from cabin depressurization upon re-entry; NASA technical briefings indicate that if the launch re-entry abort suits had been worn correctly, the depressurization could have been survived. In 2003, the Columbia crew wore such clothing, but gloves or masks were not properly in place, and depressurization was still fatal. Following this, Soyuz mandated the use of Sokol life suits, which was a response to the deaths from not wearing suits. There have been records of spacesuit failures, and Smithsonian experts state that documented spacesuit failures have not directly caused deaths.
The design goal of aviation seatbelts is to limit vertical displacement during turbulence and facilitate evacuation, hence the widespread use of two-point belts instead of three-point belts. Pilot seats, however, use five-point belts. Federal regulations still require seatbelts to be fastened during taxiing, takeoff, landing, and turbulence. In space, the launch re-entry abort suits are separated from the extravehicular suits: the former is the last layer against cabin depressurization and ejection, while the latter is for extravehicular operations.
In market mechanisms, what is bought is the regulatory agency's visible compliance to reduce litigation and public opinion impact, while what is sold is the crew's check time and astronaut training time. Funds remain in procedures, clothing procurement, and retraining, rather than being converted into structural refuge compartments or dynamically lifting checks based on turbulence forecasts. Beneficiaries are airlines, space agencies, and clothing contractors that write "checked seatbelt/worn life suit" into liability chains; the pressured parties are first-class sleep experiences and on-orbit work time. The event-driven aspect is the questioning of regulatory symbols by personal experiences, not new accident statistics being released.
Independent pressurized compartments exist in discussions of some spacecraft designs, but have not yet replaced personal pressure suits as the mainstream airworthiness path during launch and re-entry phases. Whether flights can cancel mandatory seatbelt use based on cabin status or sleep state remains governed by airworthiness regulations rather than cabin experience.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Commercial aviation has turned seatbelt checks into auditable actions because accidents are extremely rare, and regulation can only focus on process compliance. The safety table for U.S. carriers allocates injuries and deaths per mile, takeoff, and flight hours, with an annual rate approaching zero, thus "checking under the blanket" has become the only control point visible to both headquarters and the FAA. First-class passengers resent the same two-point belts being used in high-priced sleeping scenarios, where experience costs and risk costs are not on the same scale. This is not the same physical issue as mandatory three-point belts in cars: airplanes need to protect against vertical turbulence and rapid unbuckling for evacuation, not frontal collisions.
The path for space suits is the opposite. Soyuz 11 traded three bodies for mandatory wearing of Sokol suits; Columbia proved that "worn but not properly configured" equals not worn. NASA has thus mandated that launch re-entry abort suits must be quickly donned and must cover all crew actions. Writing 60 years as "zero lifesaving" ignores the counterfactual: the deaths from not wearing and wearing incorrectly are precisely why the system requires proper wearing. The cost of donning and doffing training is high because the depressurization window is measured in seconds; if a refuge compartment cannot pressurize and accommodate all occupants within the same time scale, it cannot replace personal suits.
Analogous examples include life jacket drills on ships, radiation protection suits in nuclear power plants, and repeated checklist verifications in operating rooms. High-consequence, low-frequency industries use rituals to combat probability amnesia. SpaceX, Boeing crewed spacecraft, and space station designs are all discussing independent safety zones, but during launch and re-entry, bodies remain strapped to seats and pressure suits because those phases do not allow time to "walk to the neighboring compartment." In aviation, this corresponds to the requirement to sit down and buckle up during takeoff and landing, while cruising turbulence is a debatable gray area.
The structural judgment is that regulatory changes have not yet occurred; what is truly changing is the public discussion of the misalignment between symbolic costs and real risks. The mechanism is: the better the safety indicators, the more the remaining measures resemble performances; once performances occupy first-class sleep or astronaut work hours, they will be rewritten as "should be canceled." The premise for cancellation is not a zero injury rate, but rather that alternative controls—turbulence detection, structural compartments, automatic buckles—first reach an auditable equivalent level. Until then, checking under blankets and wearing life suits remain the way institutions buy insurance.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
The closer the risk is to zero, the more likely what remains is a checkable ritual.
Protection that is not worn cannot be used to prove that wearing it is useless.
High fares buy experience, while regulations sell auditable actions.