Sickness bag

A sickness bag (also known as a sick sack, airsick bag, airsickness bag, emesis bag, sick bag, barf bag, vomit bag, disposal bag, waste bag or motion sickness bag) is a small bag commonly provided to passengers on board airplanes and boats to collect and contain vomit in the event of motion sickness. Hovercraft-ferry operators and even train companies have also been known to furnish bags. Pregnant women with morning sickness and travelers who know they are prone to motion sickness will sometimes bring their own bags.

The plastic-lined airsickness bag was created by inventor Gilmore Schjeldahl for Northwest Orient Airlines in 1949. Previously bags had been made from waxed paper or card. Modern bags are still mainly made from plastic-lined paper, but a significant proportion are now made completely from plastic.

History
Even in the early days of commercial flying, bags were used in case of nausea. In 1949, however, Gilmore T. Schjeldahl invented the first plastic-coated bag specially designed for this purpose. These air sick bags were first used on Northwest Orient Airlines flights.

Application and Features
The vomit bags are one of the accessories present on each seat, air sickness being relatively common. The bags often carry the logo of the company and attract some collectors. They are sometimes used as advertising medium or humorous such as the one distributed by the company Hapag-Lloyd Express which bears the mention thank you for your opinion.

The vomit bag is most often made of paper and the interior is plasticized to waterproof it. It must open easily for emergencies and close to be thrown without loss.

Equipment
Spit bags belong to the seat equipment in commercial aircraft , since there are relatively many people who suffer from motion sickness when flying. Also in the hovercraft the bags belonging to the seat feature. The bags are considered by many as a ” business card ” of the airline , and around the design of the bags around a lively fan and collector scene has formed. Original variants were some time used by the airline Hapag -Lloyd Express , they wore the inscriptions “Thank you for your criticism” and “Very Easy here ryan” alluding to the competitors EasyJet and Ryanair,

The bags have a format of 250 mm × 385 mm ( National Airlines ) up to 100 mm × 161 mm × 72 mm ( Riau Airlines ). The standard size, so the world’s largest manufacturer ELAG from the Swiss Kirchbergis offered, is 125 mm × 237 mm × 80 mm. It has a volume of almost 2.4 liters. Most bags are either made of paper with a liquid-impermeable coating on the inside or made of plastic. The bags can either have a straight bottom (more complicated when unfolded, they can be turned off), an oblique (easier to open) or none at all, similar to the shape of an envelope. There are many variants of opening and closing mechanisms, the fitting of a user manual and the shape of the logo of the airline, for example metal clips (see illustration).

Another form is used in rescue service. There, plastic bags are usually used, which are held open at the top by a plastic ring to facilitate the meeting and, if necessary, to use the bag with one hand.

Collecting
Among the collectors of aeronautical memorabilia there is a sub-culture of sickness-bag aficionados. The Guinness Book of Records recognizes Dutchman Niek Vermeulen as the world record holder for the number of different bags (6016 as of 29 January 2010).

In 2004, Virgin Atlantic issued a limited edition set of half a million bags in collaboration with designer Oz Dean of ‘forcefeed:swede’. Oz had conceived and run an online gallery of sick bags since 2000 under the project name “Design for Chunks”. It challenged designers to illustrate the usually dull medium of the sick bag, as opposed to T-shirts or splash pages which were the standard challenges at the time.

Although the project achieved cult status in a short time amongst the design community, Dean felt that it had run its course and closed it down in 2003. With the offer of doing the project for real (from Virgin Atlantic) “DFC” was opened up again, in 2004, with the strapline “This time it’s real!” The printed bags were intended to be on the global fleet of planes for 6 months but only lasted 3, with people walking through the aisles collecting the sets. The project divided opinion and this came as no surprise to Virgin Atlantic which is intentionally the more offbeat airline company in comparison to their traditional rivals, British Airways. The whole set of 20 finalists designs as a framed piece can be found in the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at Heathrow, UK or online at the archived website.

Virgin Atlantic released another four bags promoting the Star Wars movie Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith shortly after the “Design for Chunks” project.

Steven J. Silberberg is also a collector of air sickness bags; his collection, the Air Sickness Bag Virtual Museum, holds 2297 bags.

Alternative use with airlines
Some airlines, such as Qantas Airways , designed the bag so that it can be used unused to make films for development by a dealer. Aero Continente printed service phone numbers on their bags, Aegean Airlines used the back of the bags instead of the on-board magazine, and National Airlines designed the bag to be used as a grocery bag.

Use away from air traffic
A lesser known application of the spit pouch is this as a supplement to the Unix Haters Handbook , suggesting the use of the spit pouch as a bookmark. And also the policy has discovered the bag of feces for themselves: The Young Liberals in the FDP distributed in the election Spuckbeutel with the words “forward thinking instead of eating backwards”.

On the occasion of the “royal wedding” of the future crown prince couple Kate and William many souvenirs were produced. The British artist Lydia Leith had an unexpected success with the “Royal Wedding Sick Bag”. It is decorated in the royal colors of red and blue and shows the inscription Sickbag (“Spucktüte”) “The bags are actually just a joke, a kind of antidote to the hysteria of this wedding – but I am by no means an anti-monarchist.” ( Lydia Leith ) There is also a pun on it: Under a depicted crown is “throne (= throne) up” to read, which sounds pronounced as “thrown up” and also means something like (puked) ,

Alternative uses
The development of larger aircraft and advances in design have reduced the occurrence of air sickness. This has led to bags being given a secondary use as general purpose waterproof waste containers which is often reflected in the labelling of the bag and instructional diagrams. Another common use is that of a photographic mailing envelope (especially Australia). Airlines have also printed bags to serve as card game scoresheets and Continental Airlines once suggested that they be used as doggy bags for airline food. Non-airline aircrew have occasionally used these bags as improvised urinals or fecal collection devices aboard aircraft lacking on-board toilets. A specialized urine collection bag known colloquially as the “piddle pack” developed as an improvement from this practice. In 2010, Spirit Airlines began selling advertising space on its air sickness bags.

Some airlines have exhibited a certain sense of humor in designing their airsickness bags. For a short time, for example, Hapag-Lloyd Express (now TUIfly) had bags that had stated “Thank you for your criticism!”. The defunct ATA Airlines used airsickness bags that had “Occupied” on them. Delta Air Lines has “Feel Better?” printed on the bag. NIKI Airlines uses sickbags with the legend “Speibsackerl” on them; this translates to “puke bag”.

Many exploitation horror films in the 1970s handed out vomit bags as a promotion gimmick for the more violent and shocking movies.

Source from Wikipedia