Hand luggage in an emergency evacuation.
 

How about changing the safety briefing to something the passengers will find hard to ignore?

With respect to evacuation, 'those of you wanting to take hand-held luggage, stay seated until one of us calls for you. Should you ignore this, and arrive at an emergency exit, we will allocate you a comfortable seat until all of those without luggage have stayed alive'.

You make a good point, I've often wondered what people (or myself) might grab if ever unfortunate enough to be in an emergency evacuation of an aircraft. Would I take the laptop/pad in my hands/seat pocket with me if it contained very important/sentimental files/photos etc, or would I be only concentrated on saving my skin ? It might depend on the type of emergency, but I wonder if people have been seen trying to get stuff out of the overhead lockers before deplaning down the slide ?



SHJ

I'm sure that if people knew where their hold luggage was they'd try grabbing that after evacuation too.

San Francisco plane crash: photos taken by passengers moments after disaster - Telegraph

Looks like the passengers on the latest crash decided to take handbags and hand luggage with them.....:hmm:



SHJ

The message is 'the survival chances of my baggage takes priority over the survival chances of all the people behind me'. I personally feel that all pax who evacuate with their luggage should have it confiscated and crushed or incinerated immediately.

Try telling these idiots to remain with their seat belts fastened until the aircraft has arrived on stand and the illuminated sign switched off, try telling these idiots not to switch on their mobile phones until inside the terminal, try telling them anything, who actually thinks that they are going to listen?

They're not.
All you can do is tell them not to do it, and then accept that lots of them will anyway.

You'll never solve this one. It will just always happen.

They are when I stop taxying wherever we are and tell them that I ain't moving my aircraft until they do as they're told.

People who, in an emergency, endanger the lives of others by using critical seconds to locate and exit with their hand luggage, are defying instructions given on behalf of the commander.

They should, in my opinion, face prosecution, particularly if it can be shown others suffered unnecessary injury or perished as a consequence of their selfishness.

Have cabin crew make a note of the offenders standing up whilst taxiing, turning on their phones before told they may do so etc, and have some police officers at the terminal waiting for them. The fear of being arrested would soon stop most folk, and those that don't will be sat in a police cell rather than endangering their next flight.

If I am ever in an accident on an airliner and someone between me and the exit stops to get a bag or anything else, I will do one of two things, go over them after I have shoved them onto the floor or through them.

I'm big enough to do it, trust me.

I was on a Ryanair flight a couple of years ago (Liverpool / Nimes). Three guys across the isle to me where talking continously during the pre-takeoff safety briefing. The young cabin steward doing the briefing stopped, "please may I have the full and undivided attention of all passengers including those who have heard it all before, until I do this aircraft will be going nowhere". Que sheepish looks from the ignorant offenders and applause from everyone else. Well done Ryanair.

I wouldn't stop to collect anything, but I'd probably take whatever I had on/around my seat, which would amount to a small bag containing my book and documents and possibly camera. I suspect women would have small handbags with them too, especially if that's where they've got their passports and other documents.

As with others, if I was trying to get out in a hurry and someone in front decided to stop and extract something from a locker, I'd be likely to push them to one side so everyone else could get past.

While it's not a good idea, I can see that if you're stood in the aisle waiting in a stationary queue, there would be time to get a bag from an overhead bin, but then you'd be more likely to be slower moving and more likely to damage the slide with something large. It would be interesting to see where the passengers with such luggage were seated, although there's one picture I've seen of the Asiana crash where a woman with a large bag has space in front of her and a lot of people behind her which suggests she held them all up.

llondel
if you are evacuating a aircraft for what ever reason I dont think you would be in a stationary queue.

Probably not if there was visible fire, that tends to encourage even the tardy. In the Asiana case, I wonder how much of that cabin baggage was removed from the bins before the order to evacuate was given, now we've seen reports that the order was delayed?

As I said elsewhere, if someone is carrying some\thing (that isn't liable to damage the slide and is not otherwise slowing down the process) then it's faster to let them keep it than argue.

Maybe there are experts in the field who'd know about such things, but I feel there is a possibility that passengers grabbing their belongings is just another manifestation of the "familiar actions after a traumatic event" syndrome. It happens on a lot of occasions - I remember a vivid image after one of the towers collapsed on 9/11 with a guy walking out of the debris, completely caked in dust, yet still carrying his briefcase and newspaper.

Human behaviour in extreme circumstances is unpredictable - examples such as people heading for a more distant emergency exit instead of the closest, or remaining seated despite calls to evacuate, are not unheard of. Perhaps using this accident as a way of investigating the issue would help in future evacuations.

Whenever I fly I will wear cargo trousers or shorts so that I can keep my phone and passport on me at all times. That way, should I ever be in an emergency evacuation, I have on my person the important things that I will need and aren't immediately replaceable.

Some sort of bag/purse that clips on a belt may be better, it will make life easier at the security circus if you can just unclip it and put it through the x-ray machine instead of digging frantically in all the pockets to find everything that might otherwise get you a free grope after the metal detector. Also faster the other side when reassembling yourself.

I recall hearing that most of the people who died in the British Airtours 737 fire at MAN were those who were trying to get their luggage out the lockers.

Instead of looking like an American tourist waddling around with a fanny pack / bum bag, how about you just get yourself organised before you get anywhere near security.

Before I leave home on travels, I've only got two things in my pockets ... phone in one, wallet in another. That's it. No coins, no dirty tissues.

After checkin and boarding pass validation, boarding pass and passport go into the wallet. Then at security its simple.... wallet out, phone out... laptop prepared out (bag left unzipped) whilst waiting in the security queue .... that's it. Then at the point of Xray, its two seconds to dump it and less than 5 seconds to collect the three items, dump the laptop in the bag, zip it up and walk off.