BY Lee Eun-Gyul
Sukchun Elementary School
These days many people choose services considering the price. During traveling, the most important standard in making a decision is also price. Although using small amount of money is crucial in trip, do we need to choose low quality services which can deal our life and death? Is saving money little bit more is really necessary? If low-price services can threat our safety, would you still use them?
Recently questions like these are often asked and discussed, because of ‘LCC’. LCC is an abbreviated name of ‘Low Cost Carrier’ and contains the meaning of airlines with low price, providing only basic services and safety programs. There are now five LCC companies in Korea, the air of Jin, Jeju, Busan, Eastar, and Tway. There were controversies over those LCC companies since they were founded. It was always mentioned with safety problems. Of course there are many positive aspects in ‘LCC’ airlines, but the fact that passengers’ safety can be violated is fatal.
According to E-daily, within one thousand flights, LCC airlines were responsible for 0.63 accidents, which is three times more frequent than major airlines such as Asiana Air and Korean Air. Old airplanes and little amount of kept aircrafts are main causes of these accidents. However, fundamental reason is because of money. The LCC companies’ goal is to transport passengers with cheapest price, so they naturally uses old machines and doesn’t retain many airplanes to save money and time.
Another problem is the captain and crews’ ability of risk management. While large airlines strictly hire crew members with minimum of 1,000 flight experience hours, LCC hires airplane crew with only 250 flight experience hours. Moreover, after they are hired in LCC, they undergo only 4 to 6 months of education time compared to major contractors those who need to get more than 1 year of education time. Captains and crew has their responsibility to transport passengers safely, and undergoing training is very helpful. LCC companies investing money in education is desperate.
Do you remember the Sewol ferry’s tragedy? It was a total disaster and we should never forget this incident. This happened because we failed to take action quickly only to save money. If we were less greedy or if we cared about passengers’ safety first, would this have happened? Before we regret again, we should not try to save money too much which are related to our lives. LCC companies are overlooking the factors that can threat passengers’ safety just because of money problems. We should never forget people’s lives are priceless and precious than any other things such as money. By using LCC we can save our money, but at the same time, we are risking our valuable lives.
aliece333@naver.com
SMART & STORY 