Government regulators should not be trolling the internet looking for evidence of misconduct.

But… but… that’s job creation.

But the crew should be able to easily answer why this was a “gratuitous safety deviation”, and it’s not really because of any potential impact on flight stability or risk of structural failure.  It’s because airplane cabins are pretty terrible places for lots of people to be jumping up and down in: you can hurt yourself, badly; you can hit someone else and hurt them, badly; you can get thrown around by turbulence and injure yourself or others; you can hit and break whatever is on/below that ceiling panel, or that wall panel, or that floor panel.  Aircrews are TRAINED to be aware of the risks, and are TRAINED to manage passengers so as to minimize the risks.  And they went ahead and ignored their training “just this once”. That’s a “gratuitous safety deviation”.  

I don’t expect the captain of the ultimate frisbee team to worry about this stuff.  But the Frontier crew was trained and paid to worry about this stuff, and they blew it off.

Just like a responsible gun-owner knows you don’t “mess around” with a gun, a responsible aircrew member knows you don’t “mess around” with air safety. 

That a trained aircrew allowed this gratuitous safety deviation for the sake of a video is just as infuriating as watching someone point a triple-checked “unloaded” gun at someone for the sake of a video. 

No law has been violated, maybe even no rule has been violated, but  for a professional to acquiesce to a taking gratuitous risks with other people’s welfare by deviating from recognized safety procedures “just this one time” really strikes a nerve. 

If you were trained right, you were trained to never take a “I’ll try to get away with this just this one time” attitude, and you were told the reasons why: because the archives of the NTSB are full of stories about highly proficient, experienced aviators that messed around “just this once” for reasons that seem utterly silly in hindsight.

What’s being implied here is that if you ask the local authority permission to do something, and they say yes, that you may be held responsible for a crime that you had no idea even existed because higher authorities find out about your actions after the fact.

From everything i’ve heard the fasten seat belt sign was off and the flight crew forewarned.

Yeah granted if they had hit turbulence in the middle of it that might have sucked but that is a constant risk any time the fasten seat belt sign is off.

This was done as “by the book” and safely as any spontaneously funny/odd action can be.

But any career FAA flight examiner would be chomping at the bit to slap that flightcrew for showing terrible judgment.  If you are a professional flightcrew member responsible for the safety of a few hundred passengers, the right answer to the question “May several dozen of us leave our seats and start jumping up and down on your aircraft” is NO!

It’s a stupid, unnecessary risk: risk of injuries to participants and bystanders from the thrashing about, risk of injury to the dozens of unbelted passengers and bystanders due to clear-air-turbulence, and a small but completely avoidable risk of non-trivial damage to the aircraft interior (e.g. what is under that floor panel, that wall panel, that ceiling panel that the 200-pound frat boy just hurled himself against?) 

Aviation professionals don’t let passengers do stupid stuff on their airplane.

Lamemes?