Ryanair safety card icon causes confusion for traveller

The man could not work out what the symbol meant. Photo / WikiCommons, Davidi Vardi

An aircraft safety card is full of potentially life-saving information but one man couldn’t for the life of him understand the meaning of one symbol used by Ryanair.

On March 2, British man Luke Harding shared a close-up photo of a Ryanair aircraft safety card to the Facebook group Dull Men’s Club®.

“Dear Ryanair, I love your safety instructions on the back of your seats aboard your aircraft and I delight at the thought of spending two hours staring at them every time I travel to work in France,” he wrote in the post.

However, there was one issue; he could not decipher the meaning of one of the symbols.

“I would like to bring to your attention the list of things banned from the emergency slides, or in fact the ability of your chosen illustrator to convey said items,” he continued.

Harding caveated that he may be a “mere mortal with short sightedness” or a “simple mind that cannot understand basic signage” but would love to know what the image is meant to represent.

Can anyone tell me what this sign is?
by u/plopius in aviation

On the card, one can see a pair of glasses and a pair of high heels. The third image, however, is a combination of curved lines. He wasn’t the first person to be perplexed by the symbol; fellow travellers have posted the same question to social media platform Reddit several times over the years.

More than 2500 people commented suggestions of what the image could be; some more helpful than others.

The most popular suggestions included earphones, AirPods or jewellery such as earrings or hearing aids, given the slight look of an ear in the image.

“It’s the thingamabob duh,” one person wrote, while another replied, “Please leave all drawings your toddler made on the plane behind!”

Some suggested it was two symbols but the red line makes it appear as one confusing symbol. The first is an earring in an ear and the other is a person wearing a necklace; both of which could be a hazard when going down an emergency slide.

Some weren’t just confused by that symbol but another one beside the glasses.

“It’s the pile of bacon next to them that puzzles me,” one person wrote, while others compared the symbol to a club sandwich, a stack of crepes or pork chops.

I saw this on a Ryanair airplane (this is part of the information bulletin for the case of a sea landing after that air slide is inflated) what is the top right symbol for, does anyone know?
by in aviation

One person pointed out that if symbols weren’t instantly clear, they were not much use.

“I hope whatever it is isn’t mission critical because there is not much chance of people decoding it correctly as the plane dives toward the surface,” they wrote.

New Zealand safety card rules

There is a reason your safety cards will use symbols rather than words. Often, images are a universal language and communicate information more quickly.

In New Zealand the Civil Aviation Authority and Aviation Security Service have a checklist operators must follow when designing passenger safety cards.

Words and pictures must be “not be confusing” and run in a “logical sequence” and written information must be “kept to a minimum”.

The cards must also be “designed in a size easily visible and reachable to the seated passengers”.

Cards must also cover specific information relating to more than a dozen topics including seatbelts, flotation devices, oxygen, brace positions, slides and more.