How about a fine/prison for taking luggage down the slide?
 

In the light of yesterdays 777 crash, where people were apparently opening overhead lockers during the evacuation - surely it would be a simple matter to make it a criminal offense to take any luggage with you, punishable with the same penalty as tampering with a smoke detector?

Most passengers are untrained. The conceit that you can somehow mind control everyone to follow all instructions During An Emergency is rubbish. If you give the instructions to leave the bags, and most people do and some don't, you are ahead of the game. Human Behavior 101 would be worth a review. Then study up on Human Behavior during crisis/emergency and (as pilots) you will be aware that a variety of things change to everyday people. Some keep their heads, some don't.

Do you really think anyone is going to give a !!!! or even think about a stupid fine or criminal offense after an emergency. Some of these pax are still in the "startle factor" state (ie..doing what you normally do when you board/deplane) and some are just plain stupid.

Baggage battles: Passengers lose their common sense when asked to evacuate a plane | The Economist


The Economist, albeit not an aviation mag but a passenger mag, has some interesting thoughts on this. I suggest some with the shrill yelling and condemnation of those in the seats aft of row 0 look at this from your customers' point of view.


From a safety aspect, punishing after the fact is nowhere near as worthwhile as learning how to encourage compliance before and during the fact. Hey, a Just Culture Concept delivered to you in the industry. What a concept!


The attitude "do it because I said so" doesn't always work in parenting, and it doesn't always work with a diverse group of strangers packed into a tube.


Talk to people
Not At Them,
nor Down Your Nose At Them.

Sure Prison, lock them up for life....... :}

Overhead lockers... locking ?
 

One solution might be a dead bolt locking system on all pax lockers switched by the crew on Declaration of an Emergency Evacuation .
There will obviously be a few gotchas but if the Captain says Immediate Emergency Exit then that is his call...
CC override might be an option. And of course there's going to be a weight and complexity issue.
e.g. do modern airliners have pax. visual message placards that light up saying Immediate Emergency Evac ? Or audio like a fire alarm (but not noisy and panicky) but instantly recognisable.
No they don't... wouldn't this save CC a lot if grief and time in such critical emergencies if at least the majority knew WIHIH ?

So how many people lost their lives because passengers wanted to take their hand baggage with them during an evacuation? I don't remember a single case. I think the problem is overblown. It's understandably causing anger, because those taking their possessions are endangering not their own, but other passenger's lives, but the actual damage is next to none.

Addressing pilot suicide is much more important from the safety point of view. There are two men and a fire axe behind a bulletproof door, so a crazy pilot is still able to kill his coworker with the axe and then everybody else by flying the plane into the ground.

A punishment for passengers taking their hand luggage with them isn't going to help anyway - under stress (both from the evacuation and from the perspective of losing documents and valuables), no one will think about it.

A good beginning would be to tell passengers before the landing to have their passports, their money, their mobile phones and their keys on their bodies - because in the event of an emergency evacuation, they will not be able to take these items with them. I surely do this before every landing. But then, lots of people will probably complain about being told about such a possibility at all.

Also, pax should be told to leave their stuff on the plane in case of an evacuation in the safety briefing before the flight - many carriers don't say that. So how are people supposed to know? Yes, the safety card in the seat pocket says just that, but apart from aviation geeks, probably no one reads it.

Having just watched a video from inside the EK 777 it seemed to me that the initial grabbing of baggage was in the early stages when confusion reigned and no-one quite understood what was happening. When the CC's cries of leave your baggage can clearly be heard it looks to me as though most heeded them.

British Airtours Flight 28M.

AF 447 stalled and killed how many people? Hey, at least nobody was trying to get their luggage out of the overhead bin. :E

There is no reference in the Airtours 28M accident investigation report to passengers' carry-on baggage being a factor contributing to the casualties, nor is it the subject of any of the 31 Safety Recommendations made in the report.

G-CPTN:

Went to two excellent presentations some weeks ago at TAS Manchester on this incident. Many thing came to light following the disaster, main ones being a change in the practice of the aircraft turning off the runway instead of stopping and maintaining the runway heading, The increase in the number of windsocks to give an indication of wind direction for the aircrew, use of floor lighting.

One of the main reasons of the evolution of the disaster was the turn off the runway which in combination with the thrust reverser activation pushed the flames up and over the left side of the fuselage, fire ingressed and the cabin became an inferno so severe that the fire crews had to withdraw. Another factor that there was no direct communication between the cabin crew and the flight deck and the design of the forward cabin areas which became a serious bottleneck to the evacuation.

There is far more to relate, the airfield water ring main was turned off for maintenance so the fire crews started to run out of water, poor command and control and non airfield fire crew did not have immediate access to the airfield. casualties taken to hospital by a non authorised method so the hospital didn't know they were coming. This all came out in the AAIB report. Fire crews were on scene well within the allotted time as their watch keeper saw the incident evolving and triggered the crew to respond before the aircraft had stopped and despite all their valiant efforts 56 people died.

Kegworth was the same which resulted in seat design changes because the seats at the time had a metal bar running under the seat cushion so when the aircraft impacted a number of people broke their femur's so a) were unable to evacuate and B) bled out into their legs.

The airlines make a huge amount of money from freight and from passengers bags. The airlines will not guarantee the safe reunion of passengers with their bags nor take any responsibility for their airline or agents mishandling of the bags. Passengers who have left their bags in aircraft due to an evacuation have to accept that they will be rifled for valuables before they get them back (if they ever do) [cf Southwest wheelbarrow at LGA when a reporter lost his laptop without recompense].

So - passengers know that if they want to keep their valuables safe they have to be kept with them in the cabin because the airline will not keep them safe. By definition then the bags in the cabin normally carry items that the pax consider valuable. The pax are therefore sorely tempted to retrieve these valuable items when told to evacuate as they know they will have to find them on eBay otherwise.

The cure is in the hands of the airlines. They should take responsibility for loss, theft or damage to checked bags _and_ for bags left in an evacuation. The prices for checking bags should not be so usurious (they are seen as a profit item by the beancounters).

Passengers should be told to have - or be given - a body belt or shoulder bag that can contain important papers, money and small valuables. These shoulder bags could be worn during takeoff and landing and would be no hindrance to evacuation.

It is your company's fault that pax take their bags with them - have a quiet word with your management. It may be more effective than fulminating here.

Hey air pig! What does "Kegworth was the same.." mean?
What does "sears at the time.." mean?
What does "bled out into their legs" mean? Do you mean internal hemorrhaging?

Please can some mod make this

http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/58249...vacuation.html

a sticky and/or glue all these suggestions into that thread?

I'm sorry guys, but this discussion is getting kind of tedious. Especially when spread over a vast array of threads and in different forum sections.

Kegworth: that investigation in the deaths, helped to make changes into design as the report from Manchester also did for operations, cabin design etc.

Sears: should read seats, will edit this point

Bled out is when you lose your blood volume into a place it is not meant to be either internally or all over the floor when your ulcer or oesophageal varices pop, but drop 2lts of blood from each fracture leaves you with very little blood to go round, resulting in death. Blood does as you assert does not have to be visible when you loose the vast majority of circulatory volume.

Transferred from the main EK777 thread:-
 

"I would like to see a locking system for the overhead bins. They auto lock at, say, application of TO power and can only be unlocked manually, after, say seat belt sign goes off. Re-lock when seat belt sign is activated to On, (turbulence or landing) and once again, have to be manually unlocked after both engines shut down. The manual over ride, CC or flight deck, should always be available in the event of a technical failure."


Probably a bit more relevant to this thread.

It takes time for the line of passengers in the aisle to start moving. Just like a normal deboarding.

So these folks likely grabbed their bags while they were waiting for their chance to move. No delay caused.

It's not just the time it takes to grab the bags, it's the additional obstruction the stuff causes when trying to get a lot of people out the exits in a hurry. Have you seen some of the stuff people bring on board?! You really want that coming down the slides with you?

The problems with punitive actions after an evacuation are manyfold. Someone, presumably with the airline, would have to make positive the identification of the offenders and record the violation. This would need to be followed up with the issuance of a citation by law enforcement.

Considering the dire circumstance that led to slide deployment, this seems a trivial thing to pursue in comparison - can you imagine the purser walking round the tarmac with a notebook, taking names, etc, post crash? The last thing an airline would want, after having traumatized (at minimum) their passengers, is to pile on by accusing those same passengers of wrong doing. It would be a public relations nightmare.

Had the careless or wonton actions of certain passengers led to the injury of others, then it should be pursued, but I have yet to see or read about a clear case during an evac where this has occurred.