PAX carrying stuff from planes
 

All this talk about prosecuting passengers who in the panic of evacuating a damaged plane grab their carry-ons is ... rubbish.

Does anybody here really, honestly, believe that it'll do anything good? (Besides the legalese - at least in Denmark you'll have to establish some sort of intent to do harm or at the very least gross negligence on behalf of the passenger in order to take the case to court - and in all honesty: How is that going to be done under the given circumstances?)

I'm not a pilot but I have been deployed as a soldier and as a soldier you train, you train, you train. Someone said it upthread: Train hard, fight easy. Or train as you fight, fight as you train.

But PAX don't train for an evacuation. Best they'll listen to the safety instructions, read the safety folder, find the nearest exit and try to remember. But they haven't done the drill in a dark cabin, half filled with smoke, flames engulfing the fuselage and people screaming and panicking to add to the stress.

Soldiers don't know how they'll react in an actual combat situation until they see combat. Luckily I haven't been there myself. An aircraft crew won't know how it'll react to an actual emergency before it's seen one. But: The more you train, the harder you train, the better you'll perform if the **** hits the fan - this crew seems to have done an outstanding job and cudos to the crew and BA for that.

The point is: Training. Crews do, PAX don't. Accept this as a fact and then strive to improve the briefings, the information given when purchasing tickets, when orders are given to evacuate. Perhaps reduce the amount and size of carry-ons. Whatever. But do not think that merely prosecuting some dude will have PAX all over the world rationally thinking - in a situation of emergency, of panic - that "Oh noes, I better not take that carry-on with me, 'cause then I'll get prosecuted". Just doesn't work that way.

I cannot imagine, and don't even want to, the awful prospect of being confined in a busy, smoke-filled aircraft cabin desperately trying to get out. It must be the stuff of nightmares and it is to the eternal credit of the crew and all concerned that there were no fatalities. As regards those carrying-off, they're lucky they weren't set upon by other irate passengers.

I can, however, offer an insight of what it is like to be evacuated by lifeboat from a large ship on fire. I was watching a film in the ship's cinema with many others when it suddenly filled with smoke, alarms and sirens sounded and we were handed life-jackets and told in no uncertain manner to evacuate to the boat deck. There we were directed into lifeboats and lowered into the black water. Luckily it was calm, but I have never forgotten the experience. Terrifying. That all happened for real without any warning at a big French maritime museum (St Nazaire) and was part of the standard museum tour which was centred in the old German U-boat pens. Unforgetable.

As a paying passenger I don't want to hear arguments that I am the issue.

Fix the damn machine

so I don't become a burden

Wow. What a reply!

You better stay off trains, boats and out of cars and busses too.

In fact don't go near trucks or tractors either.

Perhaps YOU aren't "the issue"?

But after the crew do a totally professional job trying to get the newspaper readers and magazine rustlers out the burning aircraft, wouldn't it be a shame if YOU were the one to get stuck behind a pile of bodies in an aisle or emergency exit because some other selfish .... couldn't possibly be parted from their wheelie bag?

You got family? Wonder what their take would be on those denying your exit??

Just a thought?

You (fare paying passenger) are not the issue, and the machine does not require fixing. Your bahaviour could be an issue, unless you follow the crew instructions exactly!

Or, hire your own personal aircraft, which perhaps can be flown to your convenience!

Just asked one of my kids;

"You're on a plane, it's on fire, you're been yelled at to evacuate, what's the most stupid thing you could possibly imagine doing next?"

He thought for quite a long time (several seconds) and said "fiddle around with the overhead locker getting my bag out?".

Well done Captain Henkey, can't be many BOAC Hamsters left now !
How many millions of miles, countless pax, all the sim checks just for these few seconds of decision...

Obviously. But will your son actually act accordingly if he ever should find himself in a real emergency? You don't know - and neither does he.

When I trained to deploy one of our instructors had an anec***e. I don't know if it's real or just that, but: In some US city cops where training how to disarm an attacker with a gun. They'd train 1 on 1 with one acting as the attacker, the other as the cop. After the cop disarmed "the attacker" he'd hand back the pistol and they'd have another go. In other words: He was taught to hand back the gun to the attacker - which ended up getting him killed when handing a gun back to an actual attacker.

It's anec***al but not entirely unbelievable. When in an emergency, when stressed to the max, we tend to fall back on the procedures we know, lodged in our memory and our muscles, the acts our body remembers. And when we disembark a plane - we grab our carry-ons.

When I'm seated at an overwing exit I firmly believe that I'll act as I should, should an emergency occur. But can I say for sure that I won't be trying to push the door OUT and delay an evacuation, instead of pulling it towards myself, tilt it and throw it out of the plane as I should? No. We probably all imagine ourselves as the one who's cool, calm and collected and saves the day - but until we've been there we don't know how we'll react. And to rely on the threat of prosecution to get PAX to leave their carry-ons behind is missing the point of human nature entirely.

Just saying.

Just listen to the ATC tape at #11. Super professional. Decisive. Calm. Quick reaction by Fire trucks and successful outcome. Was it really the Skipper's last flight (or so)? Bad luck for him but good luck for everyone else.
Outstanding job by all concerned.
Very well done. :D

Bags
 

IMVHO as SLF, part of this is down to the airlines themselves. Charging punters for checking bags encourages them to take as much in to the cabin as they can. It might be better to stop charging for checked bags, and impose a much tighter limit on materials permitted in the cabin (eg. a laptop bag, baby needs or medication bag), which could easily fit under a seat and not be a hold-up in an evacuation, even if grabbed. The overhead bins could then hold the IFE boxes.

Part of the checked bag issue, however, is the hassle factor in having to check bags at departure, and wait hopefully and patiently for them to emerge at the other end. Waiting 40 mins at EWR for a bag to come off an aircraft parked at the closest stand to the terminal building does not engender confidence in anything changing there, however.

Perhaps the safety demo / video should also advise passports and wallets be kept on the person, and shoes on, whilst the passenger signs are on at each end.

I do not condone any evacuating passenger taking the time to get their roll-aboard out of the overhead, but if you remove the temptation, you remove the problem.

In any event, well done to all the crew, ATC and firies. All out & OK, best possible outcome. Voices on the tape all calm & professional in what must've been a fraught period.

And I suspect Lomapaseo's comment might've been tongue-in-cheek; what a standard SLF might think.

Oh, really?
 

I paid good money for my Apple MacBook Pro, and now you expect me to just leave it there in that overhead bin, just because someone is telling me that I have to leave the aircraft, for no obvious reason? Yes, of course I have my wallet and passport on me, but wait a minute ... where's my iPhone? And my new Hugo Boss jacket! Look, it only takes a minute or two or three for me to find my stuff and then I shall get right on with it, whatever it is my servants want me to do. (I paid good money for that ticket, so that those stewardesses, waitresses really, are working for me!)

Uh-huh ....

Just watched some videos and guys over there you certainly can be proud of your airline.


Who was the other person in the cockpit?

Three thoughts on bags:

First, returning some years ago from a long haul first class with KLM, my hold bag was overweight for the short-haul back to the UK on another carrier. The check-in lady at AMS instructed me to put lots of things in my (not to be weighed) cabin bags. I pointed out the hazard this would pose in causing burst lockers etc and she looked at me as if I was a nutter. The problem seems to begin with corporate behaviour, as this lady exemplified.

Two, we provide pilots with an error-tolerant environment, where their normal, error-prone, behaviour, will not cause catastrophe. Why do we not consider providing our untrained, frightened, passengers, with an environment in which they too can err, and try to keep their belongings with them in an extremely stressful situation?

Three, the tombstone imperative tells us that this will not change until and unless there are many deaths. Each evacuation in which passengers leave the aircraft with their belongings and without awful consequences justifies the status quo, rather than evidences the need for change.

There is always a major difference between what a pax should do and actually does during an emergency. Same for crew by the way, if you look carefully at the Turkish A330 video of the evac in KTM you will see a large number of ( cabin ?) crew nicely together on the tarmac with their carry-ons bags at the bottom of the slides. And those guys are supposed to be trained !

As has been stated before, everyone reacts differently whether they have listened to the safety brief or not.......Fight or Flight.......we all learn about it. I just hope that my reaction in an emergency is flight and woe betide anyone getting their luggage down from the overhead locker when I am wanting to get the hell out.

Of course I hope I never find out what my reaction would be!

It seems as though everything went pretty smoothly, although I am sure the ensuing investigation will confirm that or not. As far as I'm concerned, at this point, I hope that I carry out my duties to the level of professionalism that has been shown here by all the crew in this incident.

Regards,

320

The whole business of risk caused by pax grabbing cabin bags before leaving is a real issue and probably should be laid at the door of the bean counters who, as someone said, are addicted to the baggage revenue stream, despite the very real safety issues. Whatever the airline publicity may say, these bureaucrats really are NOT focused on safety as are the people who have to fly the aircraft day in day out !
The really lucky thing about this incident is that the engine exploded BEFORE the plane was in the air.

Sober Lark

Vegas-Gatwick is a three crew trip. I'm not sure quite who you mean but I guess it was the heavy/augmented crew member. On a more positive note, the aircraft in question is one of the unbunked hulls 😆

Captain Henkey
 

They don't make 'em like that any more.

Good job done by all crew, ATC and AFRS and probably PAX as well.

:D

Misty.

Nice to see some factual reporting without the usual roll out of the so called 'experts' on TV.