I can't imagine the confusion that must have gone on when that happened, maybe it's shock or maybe people just underestimate the severity of their situation but correct me if I'm wrong... are there people in that photo actually carrying their bags off the plane? I can't quite comprehend that.
"""
The majority of passengers who replied to the Safety Board’s questionnaire were carrying at least one piece of carry-on luggage. Only 25 passengers (6 percent) reported having no bags with them in the cabin. Of the 419 passengers who reported that they carried on bags, 208 (nearly 50 percent) reported attempting to remove a bag during their evacuation. The primary reason that passengers stated for grabbing their bags was for money, wallet, or credit cards (111 passengers). Other reasons included job items (65), keys (61), and medicines (51). Most passengers exited the airplane with their bags.
Passengers exiting with carry-on baggage were the most frequently cited obstruction to evacuation. Twenty-four of the 36 flight attendants who responded listed carry-on baggage as an obstruction. Overall, 37 percent of the passengers indicated that retrieving carry-on baggage slowed the evacuation; however, in five of the evacuations (cases 9, 16, 24, 27, and 32), a majority of passengers believed that the evacuation was slowed by carry-on baggage. Further, 70 passengers and 8 flight attendants reported arguments between passengers and flight attendants regarding luggage.
[...] The Safety Board concludes that passengers’ efforts to evacuate an airplane with their carry-on baggage continue to pose a problem for flight attendants and are a serious risk to a successful evacuation of an airplane.
"""
It's an obvious tragedy of the commons problem. Everyone would get off fastest if they brought no bags. But taking YOUR bag only slows down debarking a tiny amount, and it saves you weeks of hassle. Clearly the rational choice is to bring your bag. But when everyone brings their bag, possibly half the flight dies due to smoke inhalation from not getting off the plane quickly. But even then, it's STILL the right choice to bring your bag. Your exit speed is determined by whether everyone else brings their bag, a choice which you cannot affect.
The people who brought their bags off the plane today have their clothes, laptops and passports tonight; they can go to work tomorrow. The people who didn't are locked up in a customs holding cell, wearing the same underwear, for a few days until someone can issue them a passport. They'll never get their bag back and the airline will, after filing dozens of forms, compensate them about $50 for it.
Electronic locks that lock all overhead compartments whenever the seatbelt sign is on, with clear LED indication and preflight explanation so people know their bags are inaccessible and simply don't try.
Not if there's a giant LED-lit "LOCKED" next to the handle, which is explained by crew before take-off. Even if they ignored the crew, they'd see the lighted "LOCKED" next to/on the handle.
Mitigating against that exact misunderstanding was part of my suggestion - otherwise you could just lock them with no lights/explanation, but then you'd run into the problem you describe.
That doesn't stop people from panicking (e.g. "My stuff!") and attempting to break the lock. In the NTSB report, people were arguing with the flight crew over whether or not to leave their luggage during evacuation.
Edit: I'll add that I was in a retail store (employee) that was evacuated by police, due to an armed gunman. People were still worried about the office chair or shredder that they wanted to buy. An officer had to basically get up on a counter, and hold up his gun and badge and say, "Everyone out! Now!"
On the way out some guy was trying to ask me if we would be open later because he (apparently) really wanted to get this office chair he was looking at.
And even with a locked message, each person will still try and open it anyway. (You've never disbelieved a sign and tried something for yourself? You've never said "I have to see/try that for myself, even though someone told you what was/did/will happen?)
It's human nature. You have to work with it, not against it.
One obvious improvement, if your analysis is correct, is to apply some kind of more-sane treatment to undocumented immigrants who are undocumented due to an obviously anomalous situation, such as surviving a plane crash. If people really believe that the U.S. will treat them well if they do the right thing, they may be more inclined to do the right thing.
The US regulations already contain provisions for this. You needn't worry that the people who lost their passport in a plane crash will be treated inhumanely. They may be inconvenienced in terms of lost time, but at least they didn't die in a fire.
I guess the take away is that you should keep your essentials on your person while flying. Those items list are all small enough to fit in pockets or unobtrusive bag. Having them ready sure make things go a lot smoother in an emergency situation.
I suppose the emergency info should mention that anything you absolutely can't leave needs to be kept on your person.
Of course most people will thing "aw it will never happen", but if they hear the same message every time they take off people will probably get in the habit of not leaving their wallets in their luggage.
Apparently, it is fairly normal behavior; people activate a "leave plane" program. Having only one, they pick the one involving grabbing one's luggage before getting out of the plane.
(Sorry, can't find a reference. Most hits I get are either on emergency reaction/response by outside teams or on long-term emergency responses such as PTSD, community reactions, etc)
I fly gliders, where it's fairly common to wear parachutes in flight to guard against structural failure or mid-air collision.
We're told that when we're done flying, we should always exit the glider first, then remove the parachute. Some people will unbuckle the parachute first, then step out. Some of these people have gone on to bail out in flight, and they undo their seat belts, unbuckle their parachute, and then bail out of the plane without it.
In indoor climbing arenas, people operating the safety line may unbuckle it seeing their regular partner land safely on the floor, even if they aren't securing their regular partner at that particular moment. Here, the recommended procedure is to always have the one who was climbing release the security line.
I remember seeing a car accident once, a young guy in a mustang T-Boned a mini-van driven by a mother with an infant passenger. A moment after the accident, the woman got out of the minivan, walked around to the other side to open the working side door, grabbed her purse, and then calmly walked to the shoulder to wait for police. It was only after anybody asked her if there was anybody else in the vehicle that she realized her infant was still in the van, right next to where her purse had been. She ran over, retrieved her child and then went back to the curb, cursing herself the entire way.
I was in a very, very bad accident at 16. I pulled myself out by the steering wheel (I was in the front passenger seat) and walked over to the other vehicle to ask if everyone was okay, before finding out that I was severely injured myself. The other driver kept telling me I should really sit down, and I couldn't comprehend why he'd be saying that when I felt perfectly fine.
The brain is quite incredible at blocking out bad things.
What they need is a giant sliding bar (like in old jail cells) that locks the overhead doors shut on takeoff, and won't get released until at the gate. Last time I flew on a commercial flight, I got clocked in the head by some jerk who couldn't think ahead and put 'something important' in the overhead.
I think it would be fair to carry the small package under my seat (my laptop), but reaching for overhead is a joke.
If you're in a plane crash, you're trying to evacuate, and the guy ahead of you is trying to grab his carry-on and the bottles of wine he bought in France before exiting, I am pretty sure it's perfectly OK to punch him in the face.
The bottlenecks in their escape were the doorway and the crew's deployment of the inflatable slide. Rushing the door in a panic would have done nobody any good.
In a situation like that, why wouldn't you grab your bag if it was readily accessible? It seems like healthy, rational behavior rather than a symptom of extreme confusion.
The bottlenecks in their escape were the doorway and the
crew's deployment of the inflatable slide... why wouldn't
you grab your bag if it was readily accessible?
Wrong. In order to be certified airworthy, you have to be able to evacuate an airliner in 90 seconds, in the dark, with some of the emergency exits blocked. Here's an A380 doing it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAkAcQOnQY
The whole thing now makes me wonder if there was some very deliberate reason for their egress to be delayed. Something having to do with fire or the risk of fire? (I really have no idea)
> Rushing the door in a panic would have done nobody any good.
No one's suggesting this. You can both leave the plane in a calm manner and leave your bags behind. As far as I'm concerned, there's no good reason to take your bag unless it's actively obstructing the way out -- which, in fairness, could well be what's happened here.
Off-hand, some reasons not to: the aisles have limited capacity, and more bags in the aisles mean fewer people can be queueing ready to get off. It will take longer to figure out how to use the slide if you want to go down it with your bag, especially if the bag is heavy or large. The bag might have sharp corners which could damage the slide (if I remember rightly, people are advised to remove sharp-heeled shoes for this reason).
Seconds count in situations like this. I think people have taken the "keep calm" message to heart and, if anything, need to be taught to treat this kind of thing more seriously. The reason I mention this is that I'm reminded of the bystander effect:
> The students were placed in a room-either alone, with two strangers or with three strangers to complete a questionnaire while they waited for the experimenter to return. While they were completing the questionnaire smoke was pumped into the room through a wall vent to simulate an emergency. When students were working alone they noticed the smoke almost immediately (within 5 seconds). However, students that were working in groups took longer (up to 20 seconds) to notice the smoke.
These peoples lives could have been in imminent danger, but they might waste precious seconds to leaving the plane because of social pressures (e.g. someone sees one person taking their bag, so thinks it's okay to do so themselves, or subconsciously thinks the situation is not that serious).
People should keep calm, but they should also know to treat the situation as it is -- an emergency. But as I say, this is all speculation, and may not be relevant at all in this specific instance. I just hope everyone's okay.
> Off-hand, some reasons not to: the aisles have limited capacity, and more bags in the aisles mean fewer people can be queueing ready to get off.
I can see what you're saying but "number of people queued in the aisles" isn't an important measurement at all. The important thing would how much the overall rate of passage through the exits is affected by the people who grabbed their bags.
I expect the rate of passage through those exits has a lot to do with what people do when they reach the bottom of the slide. That certainly might be affected by what they're carrying, but then again, people might have simply been tossing their bags over the side. You can't rely too heavily on a single photograph to analyse these things.
> I think people have taken the "keep calm" message to heart and, if anything, need to be taught to treat this kind of thing more seriously.
The alternatives are to keep calm or panic. I guess "seriousness" is subjective but when it comes to calmness vs. panic, I know which alternative I'd prefer the people around me to exhibit in an emergency. Particularly in a confined space. How is this even an argument?
Never mind the whole issue of people grabbing their bags. That plane was rather seriously on fire and the people in the original photograph don't appear to be very concerned about moving away from it. Strange.
A lot of plane crash deaths happen after the crash - burning fuel can spread quickly and kill or incapacitate people inside. Every second counts. Even if you already have your bag in hand, you're leaving less room for others in the aisle.
Also, since it's an international flight, people's travel papers are likely in their backpacks, etc. If you take the time to grab your backpack, you may as well grab whatever else before you head out.
it is interesting how emergency this emergency situation is - the people are being let out only through one door, and they aren't additionally channeled through business class door even though business class people have obviously already left, and there seems to be no damage to the plane blocking the economy to business class passageway. The emergency exit atop the wing is also not activated. I mean it seems that it isn't that big of an emergency from POV of the people inside the plane.
They probably instructed you to take their carry ons. Otherwise, given it was a flight from Korea, they may not speak English and have no clue what they were being told to do.
What a phenomenal photo and speed of information. People are still exiting with their bags in hand, incredible. THIS is one of those moments when you realize how social media and mobile devices have changed the world.
dba7dba: you've been hellbanned and your comments are marked [dead]. I would contact the admins about it, since I can't see why, based on your comment history.
https://pathakacdn-a.akamaihd.net/photos2/f36a5729-6db7-40db...