Indeed, passengers inflating their life jackets too early directly caused many of the deaths on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 [0]. This is why the modern safety briefing includes the bit about waiting until you've exited the cabin to inflate your life jacket.
I have no clue how this applies to floatplanes, though—I'm curious for more details about when the article says "there are approved life jackets which could be used to deal with these circumstances".
> I'm curious for more details about when the article says "there are approved life jackets which could be used to deal with these circumstances"
In context, that says:
“Floating and automatically operating life jackets aren’t practical, specifically because of cases like this where the occupants have to dive out of the capsized aircraft in order to escape the cabin. However, there are approved life jackets which could be used to deal with these circumstances.”
So, I guess there are approved life jackets that do not automatically inflate and are neutrally buoyant, thus minimally hindering attempts to leave a submerged plane while wearing one.
Yeah, I guess my main confusion is whether that means a normal (uninflated) airliner life jacket that you're just required to put on pre-emptively, or something more specialized.
"Many of the passengers survived the initial crash, but they had disregarded, did not understand, or did not hear Leul's warning not to inflate their life jackets inside the aircraft, causing them to be pushed against the ceiling of the fuselage by the inflated life jackets when water flooded in. Unable to escape, they drowned."
I have no clue how this applies to floatplanes, though—I'm curious for more details about when the article says "there are approved life jackets which could be used to deal with these circumstances".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961