To prevent crashes, what we - who pay you peasants your wages - really need is far harsher, and probably collective punishments for failing crew.

A failing magenta line follower isn't just a magenta line follower which knows it's too tired, or too emo but clocks in for work anyway.

A failing magenta line follower is a magenta line follower or other airline thing that knows - or is in a position to know - that the other magenta line follower is too tired or ill or emo or psycho, but doesn't call it out.

So when something like Germanwings 9525 happens, we, as the folk who pay your wages, need to know that not just the perp's family will be destitute and out on the street, but that will also happen to all the folk who knew the perp, but didn't say anything.

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Do you get this objectification thing yet ?
You could try looking up "in-groups" and "out-groups".

A couple non-aviation articles you might want to look at below. They might seem a bit tangential, but I'm not so sure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-report-cycle/

https://hbr.org/2015/02/why-debunkin...ubious-parents

Thing is, lots of passengers don't want loads of carry-on. But you peasants steal, break, disappear, delay, or just ship to some other random destination checked stuff, so we have to carry on stuff we'd rather put in the hold. If it's important, and can't be carried on, we have to use Fedex or a private flight.

True on changing behaviour, but of course they do spend a lot of money and repetition on it. The trick is to come up with something that is effective and essentially (statistically at least) no cost. I suspect that even $500 would be 'noise in the system' considering the relatively low occurrence rate.

1: Dont need a law passed in all countries, just enough that the announcement is believable, possibly use language such as 'laws and international regulations ...' to avoid having custom announcements per destination.

2: No need to actually prosecute the passengers, just impound the "evidence" for a week or two with maybe a $1000 fine to get it back.

Only apply it to items that clearly would fit only in overhead, underseat items such as purses and the like are much less likely to be a real threat.

The goal is just to make it less convenient to take it with you than leave it in the overhead.

As others have pointed out humans are actually quite good at making rational decisions based on available facts.

Umm, no. I guess it depends on what you mean by "rational".

Humans are appallingly bad at
Unless Bayesian reasoning was a significant part of their education.

Today's magenta line followers are a bit like 1980's coalminers. They'll be obsolete in a few years, and we'll all be safer.

Good point, what I could have said was 'perceived facts' the possibility of becoming a 'crispy critter' due to reaching for the carryon in overhead is not likely to be a seen as a 'real fact' while risking having the carryon impounded at least could be.

Should also change $1000 fine to read $1000 fine/processing fee/bribe depending on the destination:). Just the thought of dealing with local authorities might be enough of a deterrent.

Something Must Be Done
 

This is one of those "something must be done" arguments.

This particular kind of "something must be done" argument goes like this:
<Outgroup X> does Y. Y is bad. <Outgroup X> must be punished.

For <Outgroup X> insert the appropriate perjorative term -
for example: kikes, dykes, New Yorkers, pakis, slopes, liberals, magenta line followers, ...

It's not so important whether Y really is bad or not. Or if <Outgroup X> really does do Y.

Whether the threat of punishment will stop <Outgroup X> doing Y doesn't even enter the argument.

The important thing is simply to bully and abuse <Outgroup X>, or anyone else that you feel like bullying, on the pretext that they somewhat resemble <Outgroup X>.

That works both ways: a really good Nazi didn't have to worry about being jewish - that could be swept under the carpet.

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Let's suppose you actually want to make scheduled flights safer.

Then you need to look at where injuries and fatalities come from. Analyse the statistics.

It's not 1953 - we don't have Comets exploding in mid-air for no apparent reason every few months.

It's mostly human factors now: CRM, fatigue, training, management pressure.
That's for the maintenance folk, as well as the pilots. A tired engineer working overtime on an overloaded night shift on a task they're not experienced with can kill people quite effectively.

Mercifully, we now have so few crashes that statistics cease to be so helpful - we have to analyse each incident separately, as well as look at statistics.

If we do that, I don't think we're going to find that what passengers do with carry-on baggage in an evacuation is causing any fatalities at all.

Aircraft certification requires 90 second evacuation. Perhaps certification would be more realistic if some proportion of the test subjects took luggage with them.

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But given that travel on scheduled flights (don't do a Patsy Klein or a Buddy Holly) is so safe now, does it even make sense to worry about safety of air travel ?

Aren't there more important things to worry about ?

In the US, maybe you could ask:

• Why there are so many gun-related deaths - perhaps compared to other developed countries with high firearm possession such as Germany and Switzerland. (Germany has large numbers of illegal weapons from WW2 and the Balkan wars as well as registered weapons - granny might have a medium machine gun and a few unstable anti-tank missiles in her loft).
• Why are there so many road traffic deaths compared to other developed countries ? Germany has no mandatory speed limit on 2/3 of its Autobahn network, but german roads are about twice as safe.

No overhead storage of anything other than pillows, blankets or soft articles of clothing (coats, hats, etc) would eliminate the need for doors.

The emergency evacuation qualification test procedures should also be revised to take into account a large percentage of passengers ignoring the exit instructions they were given prior to take-off and the significant delay this creates. Take a look at this video of the emergency evacuation qual test for the A380. One thing you'll clearly note is that not a single passenger stops to grab baggage from the overheads, or is even carrying anything like a purse or laptop case during the procedure. Compare that to the situation shown in this video of the recent 777 accident.

comparison of the two videos makes it abundantly clear that passengers delaying to get carry-on COULD cause deaths. It's intuitively obvious: a 380 was evacuated in 78 seconds. That could easily be stretched to 3-4 minutes if people grab carry-on. If the cabin bursts into flames 100 seconds after landing, that will lead to many deaths. The argument that &quot;in no recent crashes have pax taking luggage with them caused deaths&quot; has no credibility. Video like that of the 380 could be included in my proposed video for inclusion in the safety briefing. Remember: it is possible to change human behavior, and you don't the message to get thru to 100% of people: 90% will be enough, because if every luggage-grabber is surrounded by people who've got the message, they'll abandon their attempt to take luggage.

in vaccination theory there is the concept of herd immunity: when enough people are immune, epidemics can't spread. maybe we could use the term "herd common sense": you don't need everyone to have common sense, just nearly everyone, and that will drive everyone's behavior.

If you look at the video of the 777 accident, it is clear that most of the passengers ignored the emergency evacuation instructions. It was not just 10% of them.

The only way to change the natural selfish behavior of humans in emergency situations is to impose on them some form of penalty for non-compliance that encourages them to follow the rules.

These people are under utterly abnormal stress. Probably more than 99.999% will ever experience. They are not rational.
They will not have time to think about consequences of prosecution. They are in a crash and don't know if they are going to live through the next minute, and yet they still take bags. Do you really think that a threat of possible prosecution is going to affect the situation?

Yes, I do.

while I agree that their behavior CAN be changed, I suggest that another way of doing this is for pax to realize that's it's in their own interests to leave their luggage behind. Self-interest as we all know is a strong driver of human behavior.

My point was to use the threat of prosecution to convince pax that they would loose their bags -if- they took them with them. the bag going to 'jail' as evidence would suffice, totally agree prosecuting someone who was in a plane wreck would not be done.

That would change the "rational" decision to the safe one for all.

possibly the best approach is carrot AND stick.

I agree. Plus a public education program to emphasise the carrot and the stick.

100% agree; the safety briefing is part but not the only part of that education program. All sorts of information can get embedded into the public consciousness,and there's no reason why "you don't take your luggage when evacuating" couldn't also get into people's minds.

cooperplace, you are in a dream-world.

Passengers come from all over the world, including countries where just trying to get people to queue is impossible and seatbelts are unheard of.

If you really think that it is possible to make all these disparate groups of people leave their bags you are delusional.

I have yet to see a single airline that has successfully managed to make all passengers stay sitting down after landing, and that happens every flight.

Pax behaving in accordance with some plan in incredibly rare circumstance like a crash is never going to happen even if there is a world famous disaster where the pax all die because of it. It simply wont reach the consciousness of half the passengers.

What actually needs to get in to peoples mind is:

"if you take your luggage it will be impounded and at best it will be weeks and a hefty fine to get it back; if you leave it on board it will likely be returned within hours"

Best way to get it in to people's minds is to implement the confiscate/impound carry on rule and then the first couple of times it happens make sure that the complaints from people whose carry on was confiscated on the tarmac are widely aired along side the "you were warned" explanations.


Most evacs (fortunately) end up being precautionary and I suspect many pax are aware of that, even when the result is bad as in the recent event it may not be obvious to those on board -when making the decision- to grab bags.

That is why focusing on the safety issues is not all that effective since the danger is somewhat theoretical.


An interesting statistic would be % of passengers grabbing bags while leaving the miracle on the hudson landing where it was likely obvious to most that it was a true time critical emergency.

It's not that passengers ignoring emergency evacuation procedures present a danger to themselves, it's the hazard they create for everyone else. Consider the numerous examples where a single obnoxious drunk passenger is physically restrained by the crew, and the flight makes an emergency landing at the nearest airport. The drunk guy is arrested and charged with a federal felony criminal offense for creating a danger to the other passengers on the flight. How is this any different than someone ignoring the instructions they were given during an emergency evacuation?

I agree no airline has succeeded, but I doubt that any have tried very hard. They rely on crew announcements "remain seated" etc. My suggestion includes a visual representation, as outlined earlier in the thread, of what could happen as a result of pax taking luggage during evacuation. I don't believe that 100% of the pax will ever get the message but I suggest that with a mix of the right measures, 90% might. And this could make a big difference in evacuation from a burning plane.

@riff raff
Its a numbers game costs/benefits etc - as is all "justice"

You can prosecute 1 person
You cannot prosecute an entire plane load
It runs the risk of bringing the juctice system into disrepute - which they are terrified of.
As the old (cynical) saying goes 1 man murders his wife it's a crime, 50000 do it then its a lifestyle choice.

Ok.

Lets just take the example of the Big 3 middle eastern airlines.

To make this work, since they carry such a large % of passengers you would have to get their governments to sign up to this new law.

They absolutely know that if they do, they will definitely be committing to prosecuting their own nationals the next time they have an incident requiring an abandon aircraft.

These are countries where they can't stop their own nationals driving the wrong way down motorways.

The idea that they could ever possibly persuade them that they should not take their baggage with them is ludicrous, particularly when you consider the quantities of cash that many of them are carrying.

There is no need to actually prosecute the passengers, just impound the offending item for longer (and with greater risk of pilferage) than it would take to get the item if left behind.

It also does not have to be perfect in all countries as long as most do so the norm mindset becomes better to leave it than risk the consequences.

Also my prior suggestion of cash reward for leaving items would probably be more effective if instead it was 1-3 years 'gold/platinum/rubidium' (whatever is hardest to attain) status in the airlines mileage program. To many business travelers that would be much more compelling than $100.

I'm not proposing a law, I'm proposing a movie.

cooper.

Nobody is watching the movie.

Seriously.

Airlines have given up on even pretending to make people watch nowadays. Most people have headphones on playing with their ipads or reading a book.

The last thing any airline is going to do is push a movie that will scare people and impinge upon profit, and why would they? There is no tombstone imperative.

OK, I do understand the need to left everything behind. And let's say that about 100 pax escape with their bags and no pax dies. The airline just lost a hull, it is probable the crash is due to its SOP/ maintenance / crew negligence and fights in every possible font to handle the bad news.

Among the people escaping with their bags are some very important customers (commercially) and some pax of high net worth who have a half decent legal team. Some other pax have contacted an ambulance-chasing lawyer who knows their way around. Would you be happy for the airline to have a jail a poor devil that escapes with his possessions because he does not any better and its all he/she has?

I stand to be corrected but those prosecutions would be most intresting.

No need to put people in jail, fear of prosecution has actually been shown to be a weak deterrent at best even with capital punishment.

The law (or even existing 'failure to comply with crew instructions') is only needed to justify seizing the bags to have people believe they are more likely to see them again if they leave them behind than take them.

Pax view thinking scenarios:

Premise : Bag is important to the pax.

1: I will leave it behind for altruistic, help everyone, reasons : A few.

2: I will leave it behind because I might go jail: "no way they would never"

3: I will leave it behind because I might get hurt: "not me I am VIP/invincible"

4: I will leave it behind because it will be confiscated and I will never see it again if I take it with me.
If I leave it I will probably have it within a day since most evacs don't end in fireball.

More and more will pick #4 after a few well publicised instances where exactly that happens.

The desire is the bag, attack the bag not the person.
Legally property is much easier to mess with than people.

An interesting chat with a FA who works for a SE Asian airline and has done for twenty years, the topic was hand baggage and evacuation, in this instance the recent EK accident. What she said was, that most of the pax on that flight are first time flyers coming to work, mainly as labourers and they have no English language whatsoever, so the FA can scream all day and it will make no difference. Second point, these pax came mainly from Kerala state and have absolutely no proper regard for women, they are regarded as chattels and will be ignored anyway.

Get rid of the bins so that the only carry on has to fit under the seat. Imagine the uproar. British Airways allow you to have a 51 pound bag for the bin. Ridiculous.

That obviously has other safety implications as well (to put it mildly).

On the other hand first time flyers are more likely to pay attention to the safety movies etc, if they can understand them of course.

The part about confiscating bags could have images of bags on the tarmac being collecting and tossed into a trash compacting truck.

surely not! in Kerala, or god's own country, as the signs there say. I think this problem extends beyond Kerala.

sadly, everything you say is correct; except maybe about the tombstone imperative. We can all envisage a crash in which delays in evacuation cause deaths.

Hmm, that's not how it works.

Tombstone imperative is post, not pre.

As I said in a post that got pulled a lot earlier but has been repeated here. You want pax to check bags and not take those smaller bags with _very_ valuable contents?
1. Reduce or eliminate checked bag fees.
2. Actually take care of pax's bags.
3. Take accountability for loss of bags far more seriously
4. Understand that the cabin bags now contain things of considerable value to the pax. So ensure that #2 applies to bags left in aircraft after an evacuation. State that the bags will be guarded - and guard them.
5. Provide cheap money belt/wallet holders that can carry wallets, passports, money, jewelry, phone etc. and which are completely hands free.

Those 5 steps will reduce the need for pax to want their bags it will still not fully answer the problems of 'parents' ashes in the bag' but it should improve things. All without having the need for a police cordon around the crash jumping on pax with bags - a PR 'optic' that the airline may wish to avoid.

After the first two occurrences make the news the urge to take bags with you will go down. That 'optic' is exactly what is needed to change behavior.

Also there is no need to jump on the passengers just firmly take the bags, offering a receipt in exchange for passengers name.

I suspect in most cases the passengers will not be able to simply walk away, for safety and other reasons they need to corralled anyway.

BTW: Totally agree with the other points, especially on taking 'real' responsibility for PAX property.

Personally I would ban duty free on aircraft, there is no need to transport spirits etc in overhead lockers, it is another source of danger from flying bottles to flammable fluids in a crash, plus you are burning fuel to haul it all.
I cannot understand why a system couldn't be introduced where when you buy an article of duty free spirits or tobacco etc at your departing airport and you are presented with a voucher that is redeemable at your destination in the shop there. It would also get around those drinking them in flight.


..

Why not create a system that makes things safer for passengers willing to demonstrate personal responsibility for their own safety when flying?

For example, the seats closest to emergency exits could be reserved for passengers that have passed a safety class in commercial aircraft emergency evacuation procedures. This would provide an incentive for people to show greater responsibility in return for increased chance of survival during an emergency crash situation.