Aluminium shuffler,
I believe that the problem is now so widespread that ICAO needs to secure mandatory prosecution of all and any passengers who do this. There are already laws in place that would cover this: "failure to comply with legal commands or instructions from crew" and "endangering the safe conduct of the flight", amongst others, and these have a two year custodial sentence in many countries.
If passengers are going to endanger others because of the inconvenience of losing the data on a laptop which has been backed up remotely, to quote and incredibly stupid example, then these idiots deserve to be locked away for as long as the law permits.
Passengers have no idea about what is happening inside or outside the aircraft, of how things work and of what risks exist. Crew don't always get it right, and the SWA pax at La Guardia were right to initiate their own evacuation, but to ignore safety demonstrations and decide that their own luggage is more valuable than others' lives is criminal and should be treated as such. I would love to see an absolutely brutal crack down on this behaviour.
Absolutely spot on!!
Except for one point: Why limit it to only two years custody? Even more would be appropriate for the selfish moron who feels that his poxy laptop is worth more than the life of the people that he is obstructing in order to retrieve it!
No matter how clever you think you are and no matter how many times you think that you've heard it before, pay attention to the safety demo. For take-off and landing have your passport and wallet in your pockets, have your shoes on and fastened, and have sensible clothing for the first 5 minutes or so outside. When you are told to 'Evacuate', don't try to be clever and second-guess the situation, just get the **** out as fast as you can!! Someone with a lot more knowledge of the situation than you has made that decision. The only people that the above doesn't apply to is infants; once they have their own seats they should be introduced to this process.
One or two well publicised prosecutions should be enough to make those selfish morons start to pay proper attention and act sensibly.
There are a lot of people putting an enormous amount of effort into making this form of transport so very, very safe; those who wilfully chose to go against safety instructions (like retrieve a laptop) and potentially endanger the carefully reasoned process should be prosecuted. No more trying to be clever, if you want to travel on the safest form of transport, then when those who know more than you about it perceive there to be sufficient risk, just shut up and do as you have been told.