Why you must lift the window shade for take off and landing

Have you ever thought why do we have to lift the window shade before takeoff and landing. On reflection, this may seem completely and utterly pointless. However, there is a bit more to this strange request than meets the eye. A popular theory about the window shade instruction is that it prepares passengers for a potentially jolty landing when the wheels hit the concrete runway. On one level, this would seem to make some form of sense, but it doesn’t really explain why the window shade needs to be lifted prior to takeoff. The primary reason is instead related to the evacuation of an aircraft. In the case of an emergency evacuation, cabin crew are allotted just 90 seconds in order to ensure that everyone vacates the airplane. Naturally, this is a pretty tight deadline, so some sensible preparation is required ahead of an evacuation. Of course, this primarily involves the cabin crew preparing passengers for rapid evacuation, but the aircraft must also be prepped by the crew as well. So the lifting of the window shades makes it possible for emergency personnel stationed outside of the aircraft to see into the cabin in order to assess a potential evacuation situation. This scenario only applies when taking off and landing, as an emergency evacuation will never occur at the height of 30,000 feet. One can understand the curiosity about this issue, and it is indeed this curious nature of passengers that can prove particularly useful in an emergency. Somewhere down the line, airlines realized that passengers actually make perfect extra sets of eyes, ensuring that if anything is going wrong with the evacuation process, then it is spotted rapidly. There is another very good explanation for this policy as well, and it also relates to emergency situations. When you’re sitting within the cabin of an aircraft, natural acclimatization into lower-light conditions is an automatic functioning of the human retina. This can then cause problems in an evacuation scenario if you are forced to disembark from an aircraft rapidly. If you have been sitting in a dark room and you walk out side into bright sunlight you will know what I mean.