how to stop pax taking hand luggage in evacuation?
 

my suggestion is that a professionally-made film be produced, perhaps using high quality special effects, that shows after a crash landing an aircraft starting to burn, and in, say, 60 seconds, that fire is consuming the cabin. Two scenarios are shown: 1. everybody leaves their carry-on behind and everyone gets out OK. 2. lots of people fumble with o/h lockers, grab luggage, it takes longer, lots of people die in the fire. Hollywood could do a great job with this. If such a movie was included in safety briefings, it might get the message across. Any thoughts?

I often wonder what people carry across the world with them!IIf your going to a warm place you only need T shirts and shorts!!OK the other way you need warm clothes .The RAF had a box and if your hand carry dint go in then you had to let it go in the hold ,also no more than 4 kilo was allowed,talking transport command now.So why do airlines let people carrry on huge holdalls etc ,so they can just by-pass the carousel?Time to get serious,I was amazed at the pax on that EK crash !!!

Well going on the video of inside the cabin during the evacuation, it was obvious people weren't moving very fast, so it would only be natural to reach up for you bags while you're in a huge queue waiting to get off the plane.

Nothing anyone says or does is going to ever change that.

If there was a huge fire at your posterior it'd be different, but there was nothing inside the cabin to indicate any "urgency" to get out.

The only way to stop pax taking bags off in an emergency is to stop them bringing them on in the first place. Good luck with that.

Two words, Air conditioning!



A similar system operates in UK airports, but the box is a bit bigger and the weight is not an issue unless you can't put it in the o/head bin.
The trouble is that if your a low paid check in agent faced with a a huge queue of irate passengers who are giving you grief about the size of the 'box' and they refuse to put it in the hold, what will you do, ignore it or ruthlessly enforce the rule. Responsibility then passes to the cabin crew at the door who again try to stop passengers with oversize bags from boarding. Result is a delay and managers not happy.

There are too many variables. If it was possible to design a perfect method it'd probably never be needed but you can't 'program' human beings to do the specific correct thing every time. That said, I suppose a very hypothetical solution would be to make every seat a 'Bond villain' seat, you know the one where as soon as you sit down heavy metal restraint bands snap into place AND make every seat an ejector seat. That way as soon as 'EVAC' is announced one of the CC flicks a switch and 'woosh' .. off they go...:):D

The obvious solution is to add an automatic locking system to the overhead lockers.

They get locked when the seat belt sign comes on for descent and unlocked on engine shutdown.
Passengers would know its locked in an emergency situation.

The regulators should mandate it for aircraft over a certain size.

Simples - OOW

Automatic locks on overhead lockers while the seat belt sign is on.

How hard is that?

But as ever with aviation nothing will be done until a substantial body-count forces it.

edit.
simultaneous postings

So when the seat belt sign goes off for the evacuation....?

Well the last few aircraft I've flown, the checklist for evac doesn't include turning the seat belt sign off.
Plus seriously how often do you pull up at the gate and everyone is out of their seat before the signs are turned off anyhow.

@oldpax
There was a couple I can remember out of the UK from Gatwick on a ski holiday to Europe who had swallowed the line about how you need not have hand baggage and had put all their stuff in their hold baggage.
Gatwick suffered a power failure and all the hold bags were left there at Gatwick.
So they arrived at their destination with pretty well nothing other than what they were wearing plus a small daysack.
Now while you can hire ski boots, helmets and some other stuff, all the things I (being rather wiser) put in my hand baggage such as goggles, sunglasses, face mask, hat, ski gloves, base layer, change of underwear and a single pair of ski socks, toothbrush, electric shaver were all stuck in Gatwick.

When did their hold bags finally turn up at the hotel you ask - after being endlessly promised for the 'next day'?
Wednesday evening - so in effect the entire week's ski holiday was trashed.
I'm sure they leanrt their lesson about how to in future put your essentials and valuables in their hand baggage and cram it right up to the weight/size limit.

...and that is essentially why the concept of hand baggage exists (and that airlines charge for hold baggage)
because the not stupid know that there is a fair possibility of their hold baggage being delayed, lost entirely or of valuables in them going strangely "missing".

As to why they take them when they leave..
This blog might just possibly give a clue:
https://nickbradbury.com/2013/07/28/...southwest-345/
He left his hand baggage behind, it was retrieved later by the airline and returned to him, 2 days later note, and minus the apple mac book pro in it - well what a surprise - who'd have guessed it.
I'll bet he will be grabbing his hand bags next time as well

The only thing obvious is that as a proposed solution it's neither cheap, simple nor practical.

Even the question on the thread isn't actually correct. It should be 'How to stop pax TRYING to take hand luggage in an evacuation' Because I am willing to bet that locked or not there'd still be a few trying to prise, jemmy or otherwise break the overheads open no matter what they had been told.

I would add that once the EVAC switch is pushed/activated then all overhead bins would be locked:ok:

If it could be implemented correctly I think the version usav8r11 suggested would be somewhat successful.

Locking the bins while in flight is not a smart idea since bad laptop batteries on fire would be unreachable unless some emergency code system can be utilised... which actually only increases risk.

Having a master lock in the evacuation checklist might work. This would in theory prohibit passengers from reaching for their stuff after seat belts are unfastened. Now, when passengers already unfastened seatbelts and opened the overhead lockers...? I don't know.

How about ending this practice of charging passengers exorbitant fees for checked/hold luggage? Never used to be as much stuff forced into the bins nowadays as 10+ years ago.

Some (outsourced) agents work wonders on stopping people to board certain blue and yellow 738 with bags over a certain limit.

If airlines would take greater responsibility for items in the hold, the size of carry-ons would decrease, I think. If a fee was introduced for your carry ons but not luggage in the hold, that too would reduce the amount of clutter in the lockers.

When you appeal to a persons wallet size, the results will come pretty fast. Quicker than using penalties or fines, because (as a real world comparison) we all drive too fast and rely on luck to not get caught.

a lot of thread drift here: what do people think of my idea of a movie? A lot of these other suggestions, such as stopping people taking any cabin luggage and locking o/head lockers, have drawbacks. The right movie would cut across all languages and fundamentally alter the behavior. As a refinement, it could be suggested that if people kept their passports and credit cards on their person, then everything else -the stuff in the carry-on bag- is highly expendable. Who cares about underwear/toothpaste/clothing when the aircraft is on fire?

hi mods, it's been suggested that this thread: http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...n-slide-2.html be merged with the current one, which seems a good idea. I'm also happy for you to move it anywhere on the site, but please don't delete it, 'coz I think my idea could make a difference, and no-one has said otherwise.

2 other points: 1. the movie showing people burning could be followed with the words DON'T TAKE YOUR LUGGAGE!! in about 10 languages; 2. It wouldn't need to get to 100% of the pax, because once 90% of people got the message, as soon as someone reached for the o/head locker, everyone around them would urge them to leave it behind.