Frenzied passengers on BMI charter flight at palma
 

I heard reports of an incident on a bmi charter flight from palma to belfast on july19th. It appears that 1 passenger got very nervous about the condensation mist from the air con, he got up of his seat during take off roll and started shouting about smoke in the cabin, this then prompted about 12 more pax to leave their seats and some of them were banging on the flight deck door to alert the crew during the rotation. Needless to say the flight deck and cabin crew were not amused.

"Needless to say the flight deck and cabin crew were not amused". I find what you have stated as quite alarming. Its obvious that the pax where very worried indeed and whilst we might know what the problem was, an lnfrequent flyer might fear the worst. I suggest you take stock and if you think pax or for that matter crew should keep quite if they suspect a problem just remember the jet out of lhr that came down in staines, again people/crew not saying anything. So are you saying you would keep quite.

Yes UKDean, they should have kept quite quiet during what was a very critical manouvre. Now I'm off before the professionals arrive who belong on this part of the forum.
s37

So, do BMI not do "packs off" take-offs? Or do they run them from the APU? Thought we were all trying to save fuel? Got to admit, when it is particularly humid I always mention the "smoke" during my welcome PA to prevent such an occurance. Happened to colleague at IBZ as well, except it was the overwing exit on stand........:ugh::rolleyes:

A4

UKD.... are you refering to the Stanes Trident? What did that have to do with pax/crew not speaking up? Wasn't it an unauthorised selection of slat to zero to "teach" the (unpopular) Captain a lesson?

4

I think it should be standard practice to include the possibility of this occuring during the first PA announcement.

Is he getting confused with people not speaking up on the LHR-BFS flight which ended up in Kegworth? (Wrong engine shut down)

One of the points to come out of the Kegworth disaster was passengers telling cabin staff about the problem engine. The cabin staff failed to pass this information on to the Flight Crew and another opportunity to change a disaster into an incident was lost. Advances in CRM should now prevent a similar situation occurring again. In the mean time don’t write off all SLF as no nothing hysterical ballast – sometimes they will spot things that pressurised Cabin and Flight Crew do not.

A4......"to teach the unpopular captain a lesson "

That's a rather stupid thing to say..........as if anybody's going to set up a fatal accident "to teach a lesson" !!!!!

(The LE flaps were erroneously retracted by the first officer, thinking he'd selected the TE flaps)

criminey we're back to the passengers aboard the train/tram pulling the cord to be let off.

This is a very bad move and is sure to cause many more accidents then it saves.

I know that nothing can/should be done about verbal concerns, but leaving one's seat when told to sit down presents the offending passenger as a missile against other passengers.

Hmm, banging on the FD door? Bonkers! Still, there are many nervous flyers out there. That doesn't however warrant behaving like a prat. If the pax could see it then the cabin crew would have been able to. If it was then indeed a serious risk, the cabin crew would have informed the flight deck. Those passengers actually endangered their own lives by standing up. Imagine what they would look like had the pilots rejected the t/o!
BEFORE you start telling me this and that about Kegworth etc, we have come a long way since then. Given the circumstances it was a bad decision to leave their seats.

Morton is quite right. When I drew the cabin staff's attention to a crack in the wing they did not appreciate what I was saying although they did ask that I remain behind to show the captain.

She thanked me and said she would tell maintenance.

I had made a value judgement that the crack was not a safety of flight matter and could be left until we were safely on the ground.

May the answer is to require an intelligence test prior to issuing a ticket. As Ron White says; Doctors can't fix stupid.

The thread has drifted off to other things, but my very first airline flight was on a Martin 202 (or 404) and the cabin filled with "smoke". Fortunately the cabin crew immediately explained it as condensation. The flight was from DCA to LGA, presumably Eastern Airlines. We then took the helicopter service across to EWR. Ancient history.

Install train type communication cords/panic buttons at every seat with a placard advising GBP 10,000 penalty for improper use..... (credit card data required prior to activation)

Damn - a certain Irish airline might just snap up this money raising scheme before I have the chance to take out a patent:E

At least they didn't pull the plug.
OCCURRENCE REPORT

(Hot start BTW)

What? 16 posts and only three abusing the customers for their unfounded fears? Gentlemen, you are slipping!

Of course really good crews anticipate these types of events and defuse the developing situation in advance, often without the Customer even knowing they have been spotted as a white knuckle flier by CC and targeted for reassurance.

767 electric hyd. pump start up and the usual bangs and thumps still makes some people jump.

If I was in that situation, then I probably would of done the same. If a passenger shouted "Smoke in the cabin" and then 11 others got up, I probably would of done the same - being the 12th.

It sounds stupid, but I don't want to find myself in a situation at 37,000FT which I could loose my life, and that of my families.

I also would of thought the crew, might of said it's totally normal or something to calm them down.

What can YOU do at 37,000 ft?
 

As a passenger, what can you realistically do at 37,000 to 'save your life'? Best thing to do is stay calm and seated unless instructed otherwise by those in charge and who have the training and knowledge to deal with the situation. 12 passengers, out of their seats and storming the flight deck aren't going to be sorted out with a few soothing words!

I suggest to include "banging on the door during rotation" tests during interview's sim rides in order to eliminate all the potentially dangerous pilots that may have panicked and crashed the plane. Another solution would be to open the door during TO to prevent such incidents and to close it in cruise to prevent hijacking or even to recruit deaf pilots to conduct rotations.

Had this happened at Lexington, Kentucky in August 2006 50 lives would possibly have ben saved.

Comair Flight 191 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thid thread has degenerted into a bunch of smart alecs peering down their nose at a bunch of thickos that should know their place in the scheme of things. I know of more than one accident report where more strenuous passeneger action could have / did save lives.
One wonders at the apprent inability of the cabin crew to nip this in the bud quickly. I'd bet that instead if explaining what it was they reverted to "do as you're told" and when people have a real and obvious concern, in this case smoke in the cabin, and that's not helpful.

This thread worries me intensely.

The passengers react in whatever manner they consider appropriate because they consider they know better than the crew?

Can someone please list the occasions when passengers knew better how to deal with the problem than the crew paid to do so?

Quote from Skipness One Echo:
One wonders at the apprent inability of the cabin crew to nip this in the bud quickly. I'd bet that instead if explaining what it was they reverted to "do as you're told" and when people have a real and obvious concern, in this case smoke in the cabin, and that's not helpful.

Assuming the original report is an accurate and reasonably balanced account of what happened, I think you have made the most pertinent (maybe the only pertinent) point in this thread so far, SKP1E. Worrying, if true.

How many times must the "cabin manager" have seen this regular phenomenon before, and had he/she ever asked a flight crew to explain it, in case junior crew or passengers ever got worried? And when did he/she last have to make a PA without reading it from a card?

Manrow:

Your thinking is slightly flawed. Unless the crew show LEADERSHIP then the customers are perfectly entitled to assume they are the same sort of bored, know nothing, jobsworths encountered in security screening.

As for the customers knowing better then the Cabin crew, I suggest that applies most times there is a medical emergency and a doctor happens to be on board.

In my experience as a passenger, there is a vast difference in perceived authority levels between various airline cabin crews.

To put it another way, it doesn't matter what the cabin crew think they know, unless they can exemplify it to the passengers.

In an airborne emergency I'd much rather be flying with a crew of QF hard bitten "Old Boilers" than the much more delicate and decorative crew from other airlines, because I know the QF old boilers know their stuff, and exhibit a natural authority that is apparent in the way they handle passengers and events.

To put it another way, I blame the cabin crew, not the passengers.

Definitely the cabin crew at fault here, and to some extent the flight deck crew for not briefing cc properly.

Concerning manrow's second question, no, I cannot provide a list, although there is some research on this somewhere, and I will post it if I can find it. But the question is not relevant to the circumstances as described in this incident; there was no action to demonstrate that the pax 'knew better', they just wanted to make sure the flight deck were aware of the situation and in doing so compromised safety, something that could have been prevented by a short announcement from one of the cabin crew, as others have said.

What if the pax is an aircraft engineer on vacation? ;) Cabin crew are not paid to diagnose aircraft defects, but are expected to assume the responsiblity of doing so?

Then there are stories of cabin crew unable to make the pilots understand the nature of the problem. e.g. The cabin crew of an old 747 report that a probe (not sure of the exact words they used) on the wingtip is adrift/dangling down. The pilots somehow thought that the cabin crew meant one of the static probes (wicks). They actually mean the rather heavy, 6 foot HF antenna. I heard it fell off, but luckily no one was underneath at the time.

I wonder how any air marshal onboard would react to pax racing up and banging on the FD door.

Passengers need to understand before getting out of their seats that the aircraft is designed to fly safely based on annunciations of critical faults to a crew trained to address them.Part of the CRM process also includes the cabin crew who can contact the cockpit via phone etc.

Passengers can notify the cabin crew of their concerns but should not become the more serious problem by disobeying orders to sit down.

So as passengers you can scream yell and wave your arms to attract attention, but realize that the cockpit crew has got to fly the aircraft by virtue of the warning lights and displays in the cockpit designed for the purpose.

Not examples of the passengers knowing better, but examples of how they may have saved the day but didn't, to the cost of many lives.

Aloha 243, Boeing 737, April 28 1988. The famous roof torn off incident. From the report. A woman passenger in the process of boarding noticed a crack which appeared to run through a row of rivets just aft of the door. Believing the airline must know what it was doing and that she would only be humoured and regarded with disdain if she "made a fuss about it", she made no mention of it to the airline's ground staff or to the cabin crew.

Air Ontario F-28, March 10 1989. Crash on take off, contaminated wings (snow and ice), causing the death of 21 of 65 passengers and 3 of 4 crew members. From the report. F/A felt concern immediately after the cabin door was closed and thought it would be de-iced. While walking through the cabin she overheard passengers expressing their concern. One passenger expressed his concern and asked her what the crew were going to do about it. On previous occasions she had gone to the flight deck with safety concerns, only to be told not to worry - even though the pilots conducted no checks to verify her concerns. Of two dead heading Captains on board the aircraft, one said, "professional courtesy precluded an off duty air line pilot from drawing the attention of the flight crew to a safety concern".

An F-86 crashed following take off when the pilot ejected after reporting smoke in the cockpit. The ejection was outside the seat parameters and he did not survive. The "smoke" was found to be condensation from the air conditioning. The pilot had just gained his "wings" and was in the early stages of his F-86 check out.

lomapaseo:

Why would any uninformed first time passenger realise anything of the sort?

Even as a simple PPL, a major part of my test was exactly how I dealt with my passengers and what I told them, and when, so as to manage their expectations. And any time I take a passenger with me, I go to considerable lengths to brief them about what is going to happen, and when, including some, but not all, of the emergency actions, and what their role will be in such situations.

Sitting back on ones fat behind sneering at people whose reactions are perfectly normal given the absence of knowledge that would tell them they were not encountering an emergency when their eyes told them different, is not a tenable position.

The crew stuffed up, not the pax.

Condensation "smoke" can obviously cause concern for those who don't understand it.

Even more the sound of ice in the aircon system (e.g. rattling around on takeoff.)

I think the problem here is that society used to trust professionals (in all walks of life) and let them get on with their jobs.

As a result of high profile professional negligence (not in the airline sector), investigative journalism, consumer TV programmes stressing "rights" and postive action, society now has a tendency to be sceptic and to challenge,

I am in no way condoning the alleged actions of the passengers on this flight, just trying to understand the social psychology behind their behaviours.

I travel very frequently and see "smoke" from the aircon frm time to time, it is rarely mentioned in a PA.

On the occasions it was mentioned (FD), the company was a charter operator, possibly aware that many of their customers are "once a year flyers."

Perhaps not a bad idea to let the CC add a short explanation to the welcome brief if condensation is occuring.

In these days of mass low cost travel, and the availability of cheap credit the average IQ of both cabin crew and passengers isn't a s high as it once was. The result is that cabin crew are less able to give satisfactory answers to questions from passengers when something such as condensation appears from the punka louvres. Another result is that cabin crew are less able to describe, and communicate the observed symptoms of a problem in the cabin in a way that the pilots can understand. So you end up with passengers shouting at cabin crew because they can't make themselves understood, or banging on the flight deck door because they don't understand the answers that they are given.

Looks like this job is really getting dangerous with all those stupid passengers... it might be safer to work in a post office.

The good news is the days of low cost travel are long gone :ok: Only people with high IQ's will take to the skies once more!

@ Virgo

Why is it a stupid thing to say? I'm not saying I think it was a good idea! I recall reading reports/articles that the Captain was, allegedly, a particularly bombastic, unpopular character. There had been a "blazing row" in the crewroom prior to the flight and one theory was that the it was a deliberate action to retract the slats early - obviously not fully appreciating the consequences - which have caused the accident.

I also read that this Captain was so unpopular amoungst the FO community that a lot of graffiti was found about "getting him" and "what are we going to do about him?" I don't know if this annecdotal - but it added to the deliberate retraction theory.

Regards

A4

"This thread worries me intensely.

The passengers react in whatever manner they consider appropriate because they consider they know better than the crew?"




This post worries me .....

I may think the pax reaction innapropriate but I can at least credit that folks who have a belief that their lives are in immediate danger may well behave this way.....

Part of training and practicing how to react to the unexpected and possible life threatening scenarios is about overcoming the "fight or flight" instinct and replacing it with one of familiarity/routine to enable more rational and thoughtful processes.......


These people were apparently convinced in their own minds that there was a fire in the cabin ..... the cabin crew failed to reassure them (if they actually had much oppurtunity to)...........



So what would you do if convinced there was a fire in the cabin and the crew were not aware? Sit tight and pray?

RYRNick, you must stop writing like this!:
Why can't these idiots ASK the crew if it's OK? Instead of launching off into a panic. It only takes one twerp to freak to start others off, but this condensation doesn't just start with take-off. There was time to ask before.

Fire without smoke?
 

What did the 'smoke' that got the SLF storming the flight deck actually smell of? Panic stricken over-reaction, probably assisted by a few pre flight bevvies I'd guess

Manrow .... what a ridiculous point to make ... " passangers dont know anything .. can anyone list an event when the passengers knew more than us, plus we get paid for it" grow up!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:ugh::ugh::ugh:

You wish. A great proportion of the "moneyed up" I see run a little short in the IQ department.