Better Barf Bag

General Aviation flying is huge fun. Throwing up in an aeroplane is less entertaining, and someone else throwing up in your aeroplane is just plain unpleasant. Even if the unfortunate producer of sick manages to capture all of their vomit in one of those airline style bags, there’s still the problem of sealing the bag, carrying it for the rest of the flight and then disposing of it without spilling any of the odorous contents, and the consequences of an uncontained ejection of partially digested matter in a cockpit aren’t anyone’s favourite.
I hope…

Surely there’s a better solution? Enter the Better Barf Bag, sold in packs of 10, the BBB is a tough plastic bag with a resealable zip style closure (no matter how green you want to be, a single-use policy is just better for everyone) and a gusseted bottom. 

The theory is that you can empty the contents of your stomach easily through the wide opening, seal it quickly and effectively, and even stand it up on the cockpit floor without fear of spillage. Eliminating both the need to hang onto the warm bag and the fear of it failing before you can get it to a bin. The BBB is even made from a smoky coloured plastic which effectively hides its contents from view. For pre-vomit entertainment and education one side of the bag is pronged with information about eight aviation milestones, and the other with a few words of advice on what you might do to avoid being sick in the first place. 

How does it work in practice? Well, after a hearty meal of bananas and cream I got a colleague to fly me through a series of outside loops… No, of course I didn’t. But I did do some simulated testing. I wasn’t entirely sure that the BBB would be big enough to cope with an all-day-breakfast and mug of tea, so I referred to my learned colleague, the internet, and discovered the average stomach can hold about a litre (some sources suggested up to four litres in extreme cases, but if that happens all bets are off!). I poured a litre of water and some diced carrots (there’s always diced carrots, even if you’ve only eaten porridge!) into a BBB and sealed it. The contents all went in with room to spare (you can put about 1.25 litres in before you spill some when sealing), the seal held perfectly and the bag sat on its own gusseted bottom flawlessly. To simulate explosive spillage between aeroplane and bin when back on the ground I walked around my garden dropping the bag. Fully expecting to be picking lumps of carrot from the lawn, I was surprised and impressed when the bag and its contents remained as one, even when dropped on concrete.

The Better Barf Bag really is a superior sick sac, and while you could use various ziplock or specialist emesis bags, for $6.50 plus shipping the BBB would work very well.

www.sportys.com