Flap62: AirScotia,
I do wonder sometimes if we should have a more rigorous vetting procedure before letting people fly. If you block me and my familiy's way to an exit in an emergency evacuation while you get your phone, laptop, man bag or whatever then you better brace yourself fella.
TacomaSailor: The rude and condescending remarks made here about passengers remind me why current air travel is so distasteful compared to 40 some years ago. Back then passengers were welcome guests, now much of the airplane staff treat us as unwashed, unwelcome, ignorant interlopers.
I'm always struck by the way that so many PPruners sneer at passengers, in particular the fact that pax don't pay attention to the safety briefing, and don't behave 'correctly' in emergencies.
Unlike the airline staff, passengers are not trained in emergencies. Quite the contrary - the flight is sold to them as a seamless way to get from Airport A to Airport B, and the safety briefing is carefully designed to be a perfunctory bit of bureaucracy that will bore the pants off every customer by the third flight. (If they genuinely wanted customers to pay attention they'd change the wording and the order of instructions frequently.) Reminding the paying customers that they're doing something dangerous is the LAST thing a commercial airline wants to do. So air crew can't act sniffy when passengers are badly prepared in a moment of crisis. The whole industry is designed to keep them happily unprepared. You can't have it both ways.
I've often thought that it would sensible to encourage passengers to wear crossbody pouches for phones/passports, and to put their coats on before landing if conditions were cold. But that would, of course, concentrate passengers' minds on the probability of a landing accident, which would be commercial suicide.