Maintenance and liability nightmare WHEN it fails, not if.

If you've ever sat in the back row of a large single aisle aircraft, and had to spend 20 minutes watching over 100 feeble-minded passengers in the rows ahead of you attempt to extract their carry-on baggage from the overheads, and finally manage to shuffle down the aisle to the exit, you'd agree that these people are not someone you would want to rely on to quickly and safely exit the aircraft ahead of you during a emergency situation.

Your best option is to get a seat as close as possible to an emergency exit. There is no way to prevent the typical commercial aircraft passenger from doing something stupid.

A common definition of insanity regularly attributed to Einstein is

"It’s often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."


People are looking at this wrong.

Passengers are going to take the luggage if they have it.
Accept it.
There is no point in raving about it. The majority don't read Pprune or give a cr@p what you think.
You don't know what is in the bag and how much they perceive it to be worth to them.
If I had £10,000 in my bag, there is every chance I would take it with me. Maybe my wife's ashes etc etc etc. You don't know.
Ranting about putting others at risk is pointless. We all do that every time we speed on the road, but everybody does it.

The only way to solve this problem is to remove the issue.
Locking overhead bins are an obvious idiocy.

No hand luggage will solve it, but is the cost/benefit worth it?

How many lives have been confirmed lost through people carrying off luggage?

There are a thousand things we could do to save lives in airliner crashes that we chose not to do because we don't care enough at the end of the day.

What's the big deal about hand luggage?

@cooperplace; Your idea might have worked in the 1950's. Sadly, today's society is "f..k you" and nobody is going to comply with, or even remember a film they might have seen a year ago.

Lots of comments about stupid or selfish passengers, (and of course they are), but most people put valuable stuff in their carry on. Why?, because they know that stuff will get nicked or broken if it is "trusted" to the baggage handling system. Put yourself in the same position. You have to evacuate the aircraft but in the overhead locker is your laptop with 6 month's work and data on it; Your passport; your wallet with $/£/€/¥1,000 foreign currency; your iPad with loads of pics of your family on it; your credit cards, or the longhand draft of the book you are writing etc., etc.

Put yourself in the position of that passenger; if you can grab your bag as you go past would you do so, or will you say "Oh, that's OK, I will abandon it and claim it all back from insurance. Well, the money, yes. The hardware, yes, the passport, yes, but the data, the photos, the memories, the manuscript? What about another passenger taking it and stealing your identity?

I am not saying this is right or proper, I am simply saying that this is what people WILL do. Why do folk slow down to look at a car accident on the other side of the motorway, thereby causing a traffic jam on the unaffected carriageway? = HUMAN NATURE.

Telling people doesn't work anymore. I grew up when society used to behave and obey the rules. This is no longer the case; it is every person for themselves and screw the others.

Also, sadly, the authority and training of cabin crew is not respected. They are seen as trolley dollies. If the cabin crew consisted of army sergeant major types who shouted and barked at you, you would most certainly do what you were told - immediately. But a beautiful, delicate 20 something hostie, young enough to be your daughter?

Some of the things and abuse that our crews have to put up with from pax make me want to go and thump the passenger(s) concerned.

Just saying. Sad, but true.


.

Reduce the excess charges for hold luggage and introduce a charge for hand/carry on luggage.

my suggestion is for a 30 second movie, showing the bodies frying, included as part of the safety briefing: if they've seen it a hour ago, they might remember

OK, well that might work. The current videos are very very sugar coated.

Not wishing to shoot you down again, but I wonder if there would be problems showing graphic scenes to minors and nervous flyers?

A better idea.
 

[Warning: may contain irony/sarcasm: Unsuitable for US audiences]

Lock the flight deck crew in the flight deck.

The key is removed from the plane before leaving the gate.

The flight deck is unlocked after landing after all passengers are accounted for.

The axe is removed from the flight deck.

Escape ropes/ladders are removed, and escape hatches welded shut.

That way, the magenta line followers at the pointy end have more incentive not to crash.

For good measure, all crew property not immediately essential to flight will be carried in checked baggage.

Or perhaps the airlines don't want to lose customers due to fear of flying?


Why on earth would an airline do something that might lose them custom?

Airlines are about making money. Airlines are not responsible for any deaths caused by passengers as long as they have asked them not to get their bags.

Belabouring the point will just lose custom, and airlines don't want that. If Airlines were interested in making things safer at a cost to profit, there are lot easier ways to do it, especially as I have yet to see any evidence of any deaths caused by passenger getting their bags.

Dead men tell no tales?

I keep thinking of the pilot who went down a 747 slide with a fire extinguisher to assist with a brake fire and broke his arm (probably because the extinguisher interfered with his balance)

Uplinker, you're right, there are lots of problems here, and as others point out, airlines are run by bean counters, so safety isn't the first priority -money is. With imagination and expertise, a 30 second movie could be made that gets the point across that fumbling with your carry-on slows the evacuation, and that delay could cost lives. It needn't be that graphic: it could show animated or stick figures being caught in the fire. What I'm saying is that if someone did this in a clever, catchy way (think Hollywood) and if the right 30-sec movie was included in the safety briefing, it might catch on across the industry. If the flying public gets it into their minds that "someone else grabbing their carry-on will kill ME" then maybe this could work.

Pax Brit., I understand that you're sceptical. My suggestion is a serious one: what is needed is a change to human behavior, which is never easy. If pax accurately weighed up the choice of death or losing their belongings, everyone would make the right choice. But pausing for 5-10 seconds (say) to grab that bag is incorrectly viewed as being a no-cost action. I think the right 30-sec movie, in the safety briefing, might convince most people of the folly of grabbing carry-on. Obviously it's impossible to convince everyone, but that's not the objective.

Can you give some evidence for this please?


The current empirical evidence from a whole bunch of crashes now on video (which may be pure good luck, obviously), is that taking the hand luggage doesn't kill anyone and means you have got your luggage. Many of those that have left theirs have had them burned or stuff pinched.

From that, it would suggest that any passengers accurately weighing up the choice on the basis of current evidence would take the bag.

Take with you it's gone
 

If not already ( probably is ) make it illegal to take carry on with you in evacuation.
That by itself does little but the announcement that in the unlikely event of an evacuation all carry on found outside the airplane will be confiscated as part of the criminal investigation would make people think.

Could add a bit of sugar by stating that returned carry on after evac would have a $100 reward attached to it.

The $100 reward is a great idea, even $50 would do, perhaps. Lots of people here are saying 'you'll never change human behavior" but the advertising industry doesn't see it that way: they change human behavior every day.

1. You will need to make this a law in all countries. Good luck with that.

2. Do you think the law will find it possible to prosecute passengers acting under the stress of an aircraft crash? Good luck with that.

Here's a link to an Indian website which offers a very different insight into the problem of leaving possessions on-board an aircraft following an accident.

Emirates crash: When you don't own your liberty and property, your possessions become most important

It's an interesting read.............

One problem is what to do when there is no means of showing the film on board? I've just come back from a round trip to Manaus and there is no a/v system of any kind on the airline I flew. I'm sure they are not the only low cost (high fares though !!) carrier that doesn't have IFE.

[If I cause offence to magenta line followers or trolly dollies, that offence is calculated, deliberate, but is intended to be constructive. I hope the constructive side of my - not entirely - sarcastic comments may gradually become apparent.]

I suggest that:
- There is no evidence to suggest that passengers taking their carry on luggage with them has ever caused a fatality.
- There is evidence that allowing flight deck crew to leave the flight deck has been a causal factor in hundreds of deaths.

Consider:
- Germanwings 9525
- Silkair 185
- Egyptair 990
- LAM Mozambique 470
- MH370 [?]
- ...

We don't know exactly what happened with MH370, but what we do know isn't consistent with non-psycho crew trying to get to the scheduled destination.

The hundreds of deaths in the first four examples I've listed above could have been prevented by my suggestion of locking the crew into the flight deck.

I could extend this to clarify:
Crew are deep body searched immediately before entering the aircraft. Crew are immediately sacked if found in possesion of cash, credit cards, passports, driving licence, other financial instruments or identity documents. If such items are found, these are shipped on the flight as checked baggage, while uniforms and corporate or professional ID are immediately confiscated. The (ex-)crew can make their own way home from airside.

Dark Matter - thanks for that link, it certainly provides an insight into the other side of the coin. One can see how deprivation of such items as listed by PAX Brit could cause passengers to be instantly downgraded to a lowly "non-person" status.

PAX Brit - you omitted medications from your list!