After you get several dozen flights under your traveling belt, you sort of tune out all the announcements they make at the beginning of the flight. You pull up on the tab to open the seatbelt? Yeah yeah yeah, if you need me I’ll be thumbing through “Fifteen underlit, overpriced restaurants in a major European city that paid for this article placement” in your in-flight magazine.

But there are some announcements that might make me sit up and take notice. The Economist writes about some of these in Fear of flying:

Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero. This aircraft is equipped with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides. We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is to enter the realm of science fiction.