What I find a little bit offensive... ...the presumption of stupidity on the part of your passengers.
Nialler, I know what you mean but day after day we, like most people who come into contact with the general public, experience the most baffling of behaviour. Even when things are going well and there is no emergency, people do the most amazing things. Too many people also fail to listen to what they are being told and miss vital information. The Jet2 evacuation at GLA shows some of facets of passengers. There are the gawpers and rubber-neckers (who now take clips on their smart phones), the selfless few who, without being asked, helped the evacuating passengers off the slides. And then there's, well let's call her Jean and people like her. When on the wing of the smoking 737 she noticed that there was no slide. She thought it better to re-enter an aircraft she had left to go to a door with a slide. She also apparently told others to do the same. Yet she was shown the way to go by two girls ahead of her who jumped off the wing.
It's not all one sided. We are as guilty as the next guy in splurting out a constant stream of verbage and pointless guff, purely because a bunch of clowns with MBAs think it would be nice or whatever. As a result, passengers treat this "cabin noise" much in the same way as I treat unwanted calls and junk mail - and ignore them. I'll also admit I do the same although I pay attention when the words are different or the tape is changed. Unfortunately, some of the stuff that is ignored is important. Maybe our friends in the AAIB may cotton on to this and make a recommendation that the ratio between the marketing
and safety PA's be adjusted in so passengers actually listen.
And we must also consider the people's automatic response to danger - Flight, Fight or Freeze. Yet our passenger briefings and training assume only compliance - and even on a good day, that is most unlikely. Which is another reason why we really must re-consider the subject of aircraft evacuation.