Inflation Inflation (aviation life rafts)

This year let’s give thanks for not having been killed at any point during the preceding 12 months. And let’s also give thanks to the engineers behind the technologies that make it possible to survive a plane landing in the ocean or a boat sinking in the ocean. The PLB/EPIRB is critical, of course, but even ChatGPT can’t come up with the names of individual engineers whom we should thank. Same story with the latest smartphones, which are capable of sending distress calls to satellites. If rescue doesn’t arrive immediately, it is important to get out of the colder-than-body-temp, possibly-shark-infested water, and that’s where a life raft comes in. ChatGPT credits Horace H. Day for an 1846 “Portable India-rubber boat” (U.S. Patent No. 4356) and “Peter Halkett, a British Royal Navy officer who, in the early 1840s, designed an inflatable boat using Macintosh cloth.” So let’s give Messrs. Day and Halkett a thank-you today!

Aviation life rafts are supposed to be recertified every 1-5 years, depending on model and packaging. The raft gets unfolded, I think, and then a technician checks for leaks and condition before folding it all back up. The manufacturer of our 16-lb. 4-man raft charged $115 for this service in 2018, plus an additional $100 for an every-five-years cylinder overhaul. This month I got a quote for the same service on the same raft… 450 Bidies plus 200 additional Bidies for the cylinder. It’s mostly the same people at the same company in the same SE Florida location, yet the five-year cost for keeping the raft certified (this is an older model so it has a one-year interval) has gone from $675 to $2,450, inflation of over 260%. It will require some creativity to come up with a way to be grateful for this increase, though we are assured by the New York Times that our wages have gone up far more than 260 percent during the Biden-Harris administration.

Here’s what a modern minimum-size/weight raft looks like:

Here’s a video of the gold standard Winslow raft being inspected:

Why not use the gold standard, you might ask? A Winslow 4-man raft is 2X the weight and bulk. Every lb. counts in aviation! A Switlik is even heavier, but has a five-year service interval.

It looks easy in this video…

Related:

• Coronapanic Consequences: life rafts (2023; everyone was back-ordered): “Switlik is a supplier to the U.S. Coast Guard, which presumably knows water at least as well as Dr. Fauci knows SARS-CoV-2.”