I've seen arguments for and against. Arguments for: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25iht-edbibel.1.9503843.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/o

I've seen arguments for and against. Arguments for: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25iht-edbibel.1.9503843.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25iht-edbibel.1.95... "People have broken their necks bouncing off the ceiling when a plane suddenly drops a few hundred feet in severe turbulence" http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1951/are-safety-belts-in-planes-meant-for-safety http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1951/are-safety-... "according to the FAA on average 60 people a year are injured a year because of turbulence. According to Capt. Lim, each year about 58 U.S. passengers and flight attendants are injured by not wearing their seat belt." "Aloha Airlines Flight 243 where a large part of forward portion of the airplane was ripped from the plane. The only casualty could probably have survived if she was buckled in at the time." Arguments against: "It has been shown that there is no net safety benefit for passengers who choose to wear 3-point restraints on passenger carrying rail vehicles. Generally passengers who choose not to wear restraints in a vehicle modified to accept 3-point restraints receive marginally more severe injuries." http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/RSSB_Seatbelts2007.pdf http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/RSSB_Seatbelts200... Plenty of articles about fat people not getting any benefit from airplane seatbelts. "in most air crashes, a seat belt will not matter" http://www.linkedin.com/answers/business-travel/travel-tools/BTV_TVT/681502-31139360 http://www.linkedin.com/answers/business-travel/travel-tools... So, basically airplane seat belts are shown to help with turbulence. If an equivalent level of restraint can be created for standing passengers, I don't see why not. Edit: O'Leary seems to be aware of the turbulence issue: "We're not talking about areas of huge turbulence around Europe."