Originally Posted by
Saddath
I second this. I'm a first responder too (not in the aviation-sector). I've seen people in panic and fear for their life, while trying to rescue them. Some people will act completly irrational and they may be doing things without thinking about it.
I've seen people jumping out of burning buildings, people that were completely frozen, people that are totally erratic and need to be grabbed and calmed down.
Most pax only experience with leaving airplanes is:
- Grab your luggage
- leave airplane
I think some of them haven't tought about it through while acting.
Just a tought before everyone criminalizes the people leaving with the luggage.
Thanks for this, Saddath.
I'd like to add that emergency evacuation goes against everything passengers have been 'trained' to do over years of flying as pax. We're taught that it's vital we are submissive and quiet. We queue between the ribbons, obediently. We empty our belongings into a tray, obediently. We wait until our seat row is ready to board, obediently. We present our documentation, obediently. We sit in our assigned seats, obediently. We fasten our seatbelts, obediently. We restore our seats to the upright position, obediently. We switch off our electronic devices, obediently. We collect our hand-luggage and leave by the indicated exit, obediently.
We know the routine off by heart, and we know that we have to accept the routine and adjust ourselves to minor changes such as leaving by stairs and bus instead of air-bridge..
We fail to watch the safety drill, because we've seen it several hundred times before, and it's designed cleverly to suggest that it's an exercise in box-ticking. The airline absolutely doesn't want you to think that flying is dangerous, and they especially don't want you to think that flying with THIS airline is more dangerous than with others.
Passengers don't get trained for emergencies, like crew. We have no muscle memory, we are all startle factor. Even with flames and smoke, the cabin crew screaming unfamiliar instructions instead of "Take care when opening the overhead lockers..." may not compute.
Airlines WANT docile, unthinking passengers. If we didn't tacitly agree to be docile and unthinking, airlines would go bust.