From The West today, by Geoff Thomas...
Retrieving overhead luggage makes air crashes more deadly
When is the tragic madness going to stop? Passengers insisting on taking their carry-on bags off a burning plane and videoing during the evacuation is possibly leading to tragic deaths.
It is reported that 41 of the 78 passengers and crew on Aeroflot flight SU-1492 from Moscow Sheremetyevo to Murmansk have died, possibly some trying to escape the inferno.
Video has emerged showing passengers filming from inside the doomed regional jet, while some passengers who did escape the conflagration are seen with their carry-on bags, which could have slowed the evacuation.
Passengers are supposed to be able to get off an aircraft with half the doors closed in just 90 seconds.
While Aeroflot says that the evacuation was completed in 55 seconds, those were the passengers and crew who survived — 37 of them. Had the evvacuation been faster perhaps more could have escaped.
Airfares would have to triple if aviation regulators were to re-certify aircraft to the reality of these chaotic and tragic passenger evacuations.
There is no question that thoughtless passengers not following crew instructions are risking their lives, and those of fellow passengers, with the obsession for taking cabin baggage with them and videoing in an emergency.
In the evacuation certification tests for aircraft, the “passengers” are aircraft manufacturer employees who know the drill and they have no baggage. If regulators were to re-certify the long-range Boeing 777 to the reality of what happens, the aircraft would have to be recertified to just 183 passengers — fewer than half its typical load.
But for smaller aircraft such as the widely used A320 — and Boeing 737 — which has a typical configuration of 180 mostly economy passengerrs, the impact would be devastating, with a new limit of just 65. That would mean a tripling of airfares to make the aircraft economically viable.
Authorities did express concerns after a British Airways incident in Las Vegas in 2015 when the highly respected British Civil Aviation Authority issued a blunt warning to its airlines: stop passengers taking their hand luggage off with them in an emergency evacuation.
Many airlines changed their safety instructions but the message appears lost on passengers.
The airline industry needs to take decisive action, perhaps by locking overhead lockers for take-off and landing, to prevent passengers taking baggage with them after a plane crash.
Or an extreme measure would be to ban carry-on baggage other than a small bag such as a backpack. It is sobering to consider that it quite often takes 40 minutes to board a plane because of passenger/baggage congestion.
Not only does taking your baggage dramatically slow the process, there’s a distinct possibility the bags with protruding metal parts will snag and then deflate the escape slides — rendering them useless. And in the scramble to get oveerstuffed bags out of lockers, passengers may be knocked out and the aisle blocked for precious seconds.
There is also the very real prospect of passengers jumping on to the escape slide with their bag and knocking themselves or another passenger out, or even killing them. Duty-free alcohol is even more lethal because if the bottle breaks there is flammable liquid everywhere and broken glass.
And some passengers think it’s smart to turn the disaster into a social media event.
Complicating matters is the fact airlines are not enforcing carry-on baggage limits for competitive reasons.
Copyright © 2019 The West Australian Newspaper