This person did not bother to read anything about the incident but is quick to blame "people's stupidity". There were plenty of details available before this was posted on May 9th, including the Wikipedia article.
> If indeed lightning touched off a fire aboard Aeroflot 1492, this would be highly unusual
No, the lightning did not set off a fire. There was no fire until it landed. See Wikipedia Aeroflot 1492.
> there’s evidence that the death toll was higher than it should have been, thanks to the selfish actions of a number of passengers
Fails to reference any of this evidence. All eyewitness accounts I've read (see below) say the passengers with bags were business class and they did not interfere with the evacuation. The state news said 4 days ago the evacuation was completed in 55 seconds (last link at the bottom). Sure, they are lying and this guy has better sources but he failed to mention where he got his "evidence" from.
Eyewitnesses (a passenger and a flight attendant) say the back of the plane filled with thick smoke and started melting even before it stopped. The only people who survived in the rows 12+ were the two who rushed to the front while the plane was still moving. By the time the plane stopped people in rows 12+ were most likely already unconscious. Yet, TFA's author is smearing people as "stupid" and is 100% certain it was the stupid luggage people.
It seems a little disingenuous to say the evacuation was completed in 55 seconds. Over half the passengers perished - the evacuation was never completed. I think it'd be accurate to say there was a survivable window of 55 seconds, and 37 people managed to deplane in that time.
It seems very convenient to picture that rows 1-11 were just fine and rows 12+ were SOL. But it does seem just as likely that there's a shade of gray between the two - could row 12 have exited given more time? or did the smoke just form a wall at this point.
Of course, this is all based on zero information. If the accident investigators find a single body in the aisle rather than strapped into its chair, then it'd remain a worthy question.
But even if it turns out those in 12+ really were sealed by fate, I think it's still worth reminding people of every single time - because next time it could be you in row 12. "ignore the experts, it's probably fine" serves no-one.
Please, before I rush to judgement, in what way does taking a suitcase even by a single individual not create a few seconds lost for those further down the line?
I saw the footage and my first thought was exactly that of the OP. Tens of suitcases means tens of seconds delay. In an incident that gives you at most a few minutes for evacuation at least some of the dead are attributable to the actions of those carrying suitcases. That is criminal negligence in my book.
I now see another response quoting a Russian reponse indicating there was no congestion. Technically only the last survivor coming out could answer that question. For me, it seems strange that all the fatalities were instantaneous, while the survivors were unhindered. I'd imagine that with a broken up fuselage but not with a unbroken fuselage on fire. Perhaps the OP is overly emotional, but it's emotion pointing to something that is clearly wrong: people value belongings wrongly in case of serious accidents and the training should help people cope with that. I once saw a video of people trying to get their backpacks in case of a flash flood. They did not survive. Your property is basicly worthless compared to you being alive. We should learn to extend that to other people in case of emergency.
The evacuation was completed in 55 seconds. People in the back were stranded/unconscious/buckled-up before the plane even stopped. The eyewitness reported (see links in my post) he had to _crawl on all fours_ out of the plane through thick smoke through a completely clear aisle. People with bags were the ones sitting immediately in the first few rows, they did not cause a congestion.
I would be pissed off as anyone if luggage grabbers killed someone, but it seems they weren't the "deadly stupidity" here? I mean, the dude just wrote the whole pompous blog post with a flashy title off an unlikely rumor?
> I would be pissed off as anyone if luggage grabbers killed someone, but it seems they weren't the "deadly stupidity" here? I mean, the dude just wrote the whole pompous blog post with a flashy title off an unlikely rumor?
This is such flawed thinking statistically. It really doesn't matter if the luggage killed somebody here or not, it's faster to get out of the plane without luggage and there's no way to tell how fast the plane is burning from inside.
Grabbing luggage put their fellow passengers, even it was for one second, in the hands of fate. I don't know whether it killed any extra people or not, but it was deadly stupidity regardless.
You say yourself the last survivor existed after 55 seconds. Did bag carriers cause even a two second delay? Could one extra person have crawled out from the smoke before succumbing? Perhaps that 12 year old girl?
You (and I mean anyone but if you fly I literally mean you) should not be making these sort of calculations when deciding to carry or not carry. Do not carry. Exit.
A quote from the last survivor off the plane says that the aisle in front of them was completely clear as they left. In other words, any delays that might have happened weren't actually enough to harm or kill anyone in and of themselves.
Or someone ahead of there spent several seconds pushing bags out of the aisle, and not everyone realized the speed of evacuation was being determined by obstructions. Or, not every piece of luggage causes the same slowdown, and the first piece of luggage with significant delay caused the choke point for all of those who didn't make it out. Or a dozen other scenarios. We just don't know.
90% of highway traffic jams I drive through end up having no visible cause. That doesn't mean that there was never anything in the road causing a slowdown.
I don't follow; that may mean nobody left their bags sitting in the aisle, but surely it doesn't mean there weren't delays. I've often had to wait upwards of five minutes to deplane at the end of a flight while other passengers grab their belongings, despite the aisle being clear. Bags absolutely slow things down.
(Unless that survivor meant the aisle was free from other passengers, but that ... seems like an unlikely interpretation.)
The unlikely rumor was spread on reddit as a fact for days. In fact I believed it until I saw further accounts and discussion.
Admittedly, the real stupidity here is attributed to ME. I really need to stop caring about details/"news" before some time has passed to filter out the rumors and the garbage that people produce on places like reddit.
you are as well making completely unsubstantiated claims and only the final investigation will correctly asses the casualty from the fire and the casualty from the evacuation delay.
like, what about the guys crawling behind that last one? any passenger which suffocated unbuckled was direct result of the jam at the beginning, however few second it might have been, each single second could have been one crawler more managing to get to the front before suffocation.
> in 55 seconds
well yeah but only half passenger evacuated, and the plane was only 70% full. you can't just claim the timing was good like that, in a vacuum.
Even if it does, we know full well from decades of medical and aerospace disaster research that these problems can only be treated if they are handled as systemic and non-malicious. Punishing these people will make it harder to learn from what happened here, and make it harder to prevent these sorts of disasters in the future.
We know people act irrationally or apathetically in disasters. The only way to fix it is to design systems around peoples' inherent weaknesses. You can't go around punishing these people after the fact, we need to understand why they acted how they did and how we can stop it from happening in the future.
> We know people act irrationally or apathetically in disasters.
This, times a million.
Brains don't work right sometimes, and you fixate on weird things, shut down, or fall into patterns that aren't useful in the situation in question. Afterwards, you'll be surprised by your behavior, shocked, embarrassed, and ashamed. Sometimes your behavior will seem brave to an outside observer, sometimes it will seem shameful, sometimes inane, but it's the same I-don't-understand-what's-happening disaster fugue state from the inside while it's happening.
I'd lay odds that for most of those people getting off the plane, it wasn't even any sort of "I need my stuff! It might get damaged!" thinking. From the inside of their head, they were getting off the airplane. When you get off the airplane, you put on your coat and grab your bag. What else would you do? You never leave your stuff on the airplane. When you are in a disaster and your brain shuts down, you fall into that sort of routine, even if it is the wrong thing to do in that situation.
> we need to understand why they acted how they did and how we can stop it from happening in the future.
I agree, but a deterrent might be part of a strategy to improve passengers behavior in such situations. "In case of evac, leave your bags or you'll get sued" might help a few people remember this line in the safety video. I'd obviously only advocate for something like this if studies show it to be effective.
I doubt you'll find any studies that show this to be effective.
And, arresting someone who just survived a plane crash who barely escaped a situation they didn't cause with their life just because they brought their purse with them is going to get ugly really fast.
I agree, the solution is to design better evacuation systems. That might include preventing people from bringing carry on luggage larger than a purse or briefcase.
I don't get all this posts defending the (and I want to fully repeat the articles original wording) STUPID behavior of these people.
Yes agreed, if it really didn't delay no blame for causing any loss of life no blame should have been put on them, media coming too quick to lurid headlines is a common bad thing, bad journalism, true.
But this does not matter at all here WTF? Even if this behavior did not cause any death, or delay, it is just outright stupid.
It still risked other passenger's lives (no one can judge in this situation by "looking at the aisle" if it is save trying to get your luggage or not),
it still risked hurting other people during evacuation,
it still risked damaging the slide,
it still ignored the safety instructions and the stewardess shouting at the people to get the fuck out,
it still just is an ultra egoistic asshole move trying to save your belongings.
And btw I also don't get the defense of "people act irrationally or apathetically in disasters". Your most basic natural instinct is to flee a life endangering situation, the second thing that can happen is an apathetic reaction, but apathetic reaction != trying to save your belongings while a plane is burning. Anyone who tries to fetch and carry their luggage while the stewardess is shouting at you to get out is just trying to save their very belongings, and not reacting irrational or apathetic. Unfortunately stupidity and egoism is also human nature, but still it is just this and not irrationality or apathy, this behavior is not defendable and just outright stupid.
I also don't get the downplay of "people just carrying a purse"... please watch the footage, you can see a roll-aboard.
не пизди, не просил он жену ждать. Про жену он пишет только "толкнул вперёд". Про "сколько мы ждали" он говорит лишь "время относительно, не могу точно оценить. Но я не могу сказать, что что-то тормозило эвакуацию".
Мы с женой оставались на местах после удара — она пыталась встать и побежать, но я сказал сесть, потому что ждал, что из-за паники в проходе начнется давка.
exact citation from the article where he said what I described above: "она пыталась встать и побежать, но я сказал сесть, потому что ждал, что из-за паники в проходе начнется давка."
I don't want to! But we can't have people posting like that here, so please don't. And unfortunately you have a history of posting in an aggressive style. I realize this is likely more cultural than intentional, but in a cross-cultural environment like HN is, that unfortunately doesn't help. The effects are just the same, and that is what we have to go by.
If you'd take a look at the site guidelines and recalibrate, we'd be grateful.
Well, it's hilarious how you are trying to quote parts of witnesses' words just to prove opinion, which is strictly opposite to what he actually told :) Nobody expect that other passengers would leave the plane instantly, so he waited few seconds but there were no issue with the people taking their luggage.
> how you are trying to quote parts of witnesses' words just to prove opinion, which is strictly opposite to what he actually told
Third time: I quoted exact person's words, where he said that he waited until exit will be freed.
> so he waited few seconds but there were no issue with the people taking their luggage.
there is nothing about few seconds in his words, and he couldn't see luggage problem because was 10 rows from business class rows.
I think you follow some strategy to flood discussion with low quality arguments with hope opponent will give up, so I give up, I will not respond you anymore.
> and he couldn't see luggage problem because was 10 rows from business class rows
And you were closer, of course, lol.
If _last_ survivor says there was no issue with luggage, there is no reason to think opposite. If he would be put at risk just because somebody's luggage, he would definitely speak out.
> there is nothing about few seconds in his words
1) Evacuation took 55 seconds.
2) Quote: "I can't say nothing about the luggage, I had no issue with it on my way"
3) Official statement says that rumors about luggage were just rumors and people who died had no time to even unlock their seatbelts, because died in a few seconds because of toxic smoke.
Anyone getting off the plane with a carry-on should be charged with negligent homicide or similar. 55 seconds vs 45 vs 35 could be the different between 40 dead and 42 or 44. One life matters, your laptop does not. Only one of these things can be restored from iCloud. Leave. Your. Bags. On. The. Plane. This apologism has to stop. Other than that very little you said is disrupted by the author — they themselves point out it’d be very unlikely the fire started in the air. They are a pilot after all.
To your own point anyone who stops and grabs carry-on from the overhead bins while the cabin is filling with smoke and anyone past row 12 is passed out is criminally stupid. I don’t care if it took 55 seconds or 12, it’s not okay.
How thrilled would you be if your grandmother died because someone couldn’t leave their laptop aboard?
There is evidence in psychology studies about human reaction to catastrophes such as this. People often default to habitual behavior, possibly because active decision making may be "disabled" as responsible regions of the brain get overwhelmed.
It reaches an extent where people are entirely incapable of unbuckling their seatbelts because a more common and therefore default mechanism for unbuckling is the one you would use in your car. And that works entirely different from the ones in planes.
This is more the truth IMO. They aren't consciously being jerks because they don't have time to have those kinds of thoughts. Which means that throwing criminal charges around months later won't help anything. The only way to change such behavior would be for people to practice serious everything's-on-fire drop-everything-and-run-NOW evacuations regularly. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
Okay, maybe having a short preflight safety briefing that people would actually pay attention to and that told people that would help. Or maybe just scare the crap out of everyone.
Really? What about people paking in handicapped space? Is this because they don't have time to think clearly, or is it because they only carr about themselves? Why would people be different when exiting a plane, as when shopping?
Uhh that has absolutely nothing to do with this situation. What's the point in bringing it up?
My point is that people in unfamiliar situations, particularly stressful and panicked ones, tend to stop thinking and revert to familiar behaviors. For most people, that's gathering their stuff before leaving. Their behavior will never change based on legal penalties applied months later. To get them to behave differently, they have to practice the different behavior beforehand.
Parking is a normal, common activity with no reasonable expectation of panic or stress. People have plenty of time to think about what they're doing. That's why legal penalties are an effective deterrent. I have no idea what would lead you to believe that the situations are comparable.
I'm reading this comment and I'm thinking : you're absolutely right, they should be!
Yet. I have been in plane on fire and I did grab my backpack.. I didn't really act consciously, and somehow I had rationalized the order "everyone, get out now!" as some kind of random evacuation exercises. (European in my teens back then and one of my first flights)
But maybe a few public court cases (even if everybody was acquitted in the end) would cause some people to remember not to grab the bags in the next accident.
Maybe instead of pointless court cases, lots of publicity about correct behavior for the same effect.
That doesn't mean it's not a damn good thing to say if you want to be popular on the internet. Hard-line opinions about Bad Things(TM) always win virtue points regardless of whether or not those opinions are well informed.
It would be terribly difficult for the prosecutor to prove that "but for" the actions of the defendant another person died.
Secondly, I find it hard to believe that anyone who has had to act in moments as extreme as this would have such a harsh view of others who had never been in such a situation.
I spent a good portion of my adult life in extreme situations and I can tell you people do not operate with their conscious minds. They do not really "make choices", things just happen. This is why training is so important for people who might encounter extreme situations.
It's worth noting that the reason many people take their baggage with them is because airlines often can't be trusted to handle it. Bags get lost, damaged, delayed on reclaim, etc, and they charge extra.
If those problems were solved, airlines could forbid taking anything with you to the cabin with other passengers and evacuation would be easier.
If a airplane crashes, all of the baggage is confiscated whether you took it off the plane or not.
Do you really think that something happens to bring down a plane and they just let the people who took their baggage off the plane during the emergency to just go home with their baggage? I can't believe this has to be explained to anyone.
The post you're responding to is talking about the general case of non-emergency travel situations, which would if less poorly handled by airlines, allow for fewer complications in the specific case of emergencies.
Hm. Technically, can we even say the evacuation was "completed" when a considerable amount of passengers never left the plane alive?
Have you ever unboarded a plane? If so, you clearly remember that every single hand luggage item, every single person on the isle causes congestion, even those in business class, right? I think it is impossible to state that "just the hand items that did not cause congestion were taken".
Further, was there a magic curtain between the areas of the plane that were unaffected from smoke and fire, and the affected parts? Fire and smoke spread, right? If not, at least some passengers were catched in fire and smoke after the plane had landed. Some of these passengers might have been able to escape, given an open isle. Only considering the opposite (unlikely case) is ignorant.
The ones taking luggage with them most certainly slowed down the process and caused a jam.
Once you stop in the isle, drag a luggage item down the isle and down an emergency ramp, you slow down the process. Unless somebody behind you is also causing a jam, you are directly to blame.
> No, the lightning did not set off a fire. There was no fire until it landed.
There is video on YouTube from a passenger, showing the left engine spewing out massive flames, apparently before the first contact with the ground - the plane is speeding forward at a stable angle.
> Yet, TFA's author is smearing people as "stupid" and 100% certain it was the stupid luggage people.
In the other videos you can clearly see passengers going down the emergency slide with bags in hand. One passenger carries a bag so heavy it bends the slide halfway through and violently hits the ground - how is that not stupid?
Bags risk damage to the slide, which could prevent passengers from using them, as well as causing physical impact injuries to passengers below. There is no excuse.
I don't know what video you are referring to, but the ones I've seen from the inside look like the plane is taxiing after the third bounce, which likely caused the fuel leak and the whole fire.
Grabbing bags is stupid, here in this case people died for a different reason.
> One passenger carries a bag so heavy it bends the slide halfway through and violently hits the ground
Not to discount the stupidity involved in holding onto one's bags (which I absolutely agree is absurd, whether it's attributable to simple human nature or not), but that makes it sound like the slide was defective as well. Even a very heavy carry-on is relatively modest compared to the weight of the person carrying it.
> This person did not bother to read anything about the incident
"This person" (Patrick Smith) did read up on it but more importantly is a senior pilot and from even before then an aviation nerd. I've been reading him for more than a decade and he's pretty smart and thoughtful. It's unusual for him to comment quickly which implies he does see something to say.
>> If indeed lightning touched off a fire aboard Aeroflot 1492, this would be highly unusual
> No, the lightning did not set off a fire. There was no fire until it landed. See Wikipedia Aeroflot 1492.
And indeed that's what he says: "[the claim is the the plane was on fire due to lightning but] it appears the plane touched down rather violently, resulting in the subsequent fire and crash. Planes are designed to withstand lightning strikes (see below), and almost never do they cause serious problems." (emphasis mine).
The article talks about stupidity, and these people are often marked as idiots. It is important to note that people follow patterns. Dazzled, scared, and panicking people even more so. I don't know what is the solution to this problem, but I bet the first step is to drop the labels, accept that this is how many reacts currently and design around that behaviour.
Take for example fire exits. We know masses have died meters from safety because they couldn't figure out to pull instead of push, or had the calm to handle a door knob. Did we blame their 'stupidity'? No, we mandated outward opening doors and push-to-open emergency latches.
"""
In moments of total disaster — plane crashes or terrorist attacks — something happens in our brains that affects the way we think. We behave differently, often irrationally.
...
Ripley searches for patterns in human behavior by interviewing hundreds of people who lived through catastrophes. Quick-witted survivors are surprisingly anomalous. One fellow who made it through a horrific aircraft disaster in 1977 happened to be sitting on the runway reading an in-flight safety instruction card when another plane crashed into his. He grabbed his wife, leapt through a hole in the fuselage, and turned to see his fellow passengers remaining docilely in their seats, immobile. Most of them died within minutes as fire swept through the wreckage.
...
The author concludes that all of us undergo a three-stage process when we find ourselves in mortal peril: denial, deliberation and the "decisive moment," during which the survivor buckles down and acts. The trick, she says, may be to understand our instincts, which, in a crisis, may betray us.
"""
Some people are so dazzled they will just remain in their seats and then go unconscious because of the smoke... I made some research about plane accidents, and here's what I learned: When entering the plane, take note where the exits are. If there's going to be a crash landing, brace your head against the front seat, so that you don't get knocked out. Also brace your limbs (legs under your own chair) so they don't hit something and break, there might be a lot of g-force, and you'll need your legs in order to get out.
As soon as the plane is on the ground, unbuckle yourself and get out! Statistically you need to get out within 20 seconds in order to survive! So just leave everything, climb the seats if the center is clogged. The doors are opened manually (by the flight personnel if they're able to) by pushing a lever, and might open slowly to leave some time for the escape slide to inflate. If you land in water, you only want to open the upper section of the door to not let in water.
Once out, go 100 meters or so away from the crash site to avoid smoke and be safe from explosions. But don't go too far away or you might get lost because of confusion and shock.
is there any good reason why the seatbelts don't also go over the torso like in a car? I can understand that amusement-park style "seat belts" would be too heavy, but couldn't a quick-inflate airbag in similar shape provide similar functionality, but then activated by the crew instead of collision detection?
> There are a few reasons why the lift-lever lap belt vanished from cars but not from airplanes. For one thing, a shoulder harness in a car is attached to the car’s frame, a very sturdy part of the car. In an airplane, it would have to be attached to the wall (“bulkhead”), which is less sturdy. You could attach it to the seat, but you’d have to reinforce the seat, which increases weight, which we don’t want.
> The aircraft industry has made some minor steps towards upgrading this system, instituting belts that actually have little airbags right in them. But the venerable lift-lever lap-borne seatbelt costs about $50 each, and passes the FAA’s requirements. So they remain in our seats.
> The article talks about stupidity, and these people are often marked as idiots. ... I bet the first step is to drop the labels, accept that this is how many reacts currently and design around that behaviour.
Similarly, attributing crashes to "pilot error" is an obsolete and unproductive excuse.
TFA asks that "leave your bags behind" be made more prominent in the safety talk you get while taxiing telling you to buckle your seatbelts. Not a bad idea.
They can say it a million times, but people won't act rationally when their plane slams into the ground and bursts into flames, and can we expect them to? I don't blame these people, I don't know how I would react as I've never been in this situation.
If you beat it into people enough, most of them will probably remember. Where's the life vest? Under the seat, of course. Most people could tell you that in their sleep. Yet, do they study airplanes? No, they just hear that every single time they take off.
Add in a couple scenes in spy thriller movies of Cary Grant or George Clooney smacking someone in a burning plane and shouting "Leave your luggage behind!", and you could probably cement it pretty good.
It's pretty fascinating how quietly some things transition from "novel" to "common knowledge" inside your head.
I've definitely absorbed 'either there's a life vest under the seat or the seat cushion is a flotation device' and 'if oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, put yours on first and then help others' by osmosis over various flights, but I also definitely don't remember 'leave luggage behind' being anywhere near as prominent.
I think it's more selfishness instead of stupidity rather than panic instead of stupidity. I even suspect that the author actually meant selfishness, but called it stupidity to get at those who consider selfishness a virtue, and maybe also as a polite application of Hanlon's razor.
or had the calm to handle a door knob [...] we mandated [...] push-to-open emergency latches
Tangent, is that about focus & presence of mind or the knob getting hot? Much easier to push open a hot latch with your clothed shoulder than to turn a red-hot knob.
There were a few incidents where people were crushed to death by a panicked crowd trying to flee burning buildings. With that much force behind you, there’s no way to open an inward door. It’ll also generate a lot of friction between the bolt and strike plate, making a traditional doorknob hard to open.
The new-style emergency exit door is designed to act like a pressure release valve— if a person is pressed up against the inside with life threatening force, the door opens automatically and lets the fleeing crowd out.
If that knob is red-hot you are either dead or you don't want to go to the other side. It takes time for a knob to heat to scalding temperature. If you haven't opened it until that time you are already dead.
Sorry, but grabbing your luggage during the evacuation of a plane due to fire is incredibly stupid.
All your shit can be replaced. Lifes, which depend on seconds because pathes are blocked by passengers grabbing their luggage or by dropped luggage, cannot.
In true emergency situations, lots of people do stupid stuff, even if those people act very sensibly in everyday life. This is a statistical reality, not a moral judgment.
This is the same reason that, for example, first aid training includes pointing at specific people and telling them to do things, rather than more generically asking for help.
The article raises a valid concern, but the last person who left the plane alive said in a recent interview that there was no congestion in this particular accident. [0]
>Я ничего не могу сказать насчет сумок, про которые все говорят. Мне они точно не помешали: я шел последним, за мной никого не было. Я уже не могу сказать, сколько мы ждали, пока проход освободится, — время относительно, не могу точно оценить. Но я не могу сказать, что что-то тормозило эвакуацию. Был только один момент — одна женщина побежала вперед и упала, но ее вынесли. Никакой давки в самолете не было.
> I can't say anything regarding bags, about which everyone is talking. They definitely didn't get in my way: I went last, there was nobody behind me. I can't say how long we waited until the way was clear -- time is relative, and I cannot judge precisely. But I cannot say that there was anything interfering with the evacuation. There was one moment -- one woman ran ahead, and she fell, but she was carried out. There was no stampede/crush on the plane.
At least one aggrevating factor seems to me to be the fault of the airlines.
They were so busy adding fees to checked-in luggage that everybody now tries to stuff everything into their carry-on.
If the majority of people's luggage was checked in, it would not make the problem go away, but some selfish idiot running out with his laptop under his arm is a lot different than the same idiot trying to get his laptop AND his oversized wheelie bag off the plane.
At least in Europe, budget airlines (and not only them), during online checking, purposely assign seats rows away for people on the booking, if you are not travelling alone. You have to pay additional fee to be seated with your cotravellers. Many people don't take this option.
Now, imagine emergency evacuation situation. Most people will gladly dump the luggage, laptops etc., but would you leave the plane, knowing that your wife, kids, mother-in-law (maybe not a good example) are few rows behind and you are not sure if they are Ok. No, you will stay, trying to help them and create congestion.
Unfortunately, it will take an accident listing this type of "stupid" behavior as contributing cause for fatalities, in order for legislation to prevent the moron MBAs that decided to monetize their seats, extorting people to pay more so that they can sit together, to stop doing this.
I haven't flown for over a decade, so I don't know if it's true (about artificially spreading people unless you pay more), but regardless if it happens today or not, it seems important to prevent this practice from occuring for the hypothetical reason you specify.
Even if checked-in fees went away, I would still try to go cabin luggage only for short trips away (anything under a week) because it is significantly quicker than waiting for luggage to be unloaded etc.
And for what it’s worth, I use a backpack, so it’s often stored at my feet due to locker space pseudo reserved for hard cases.
While that is certainly true for some travelers (myself included), some passengers would prefer to check their luggage and not wheel/carry it around, struggle to lift it into the overhead bin, etc. When I travel for work, I'm always surprised at the number of coworkers who happily check their baggage.
Wizzair was so expensive with carry-on luggage that I ended up putting most of my clothes in a cardboard box and shipping it to the hotel using DHL. My small backpack was free and I used it for toiletries and two days of clothes.
there's also a major shift in relative worth of the hand luggage. what was small value electronic and underwear is now thousand dollars worth in devices with various leases and terms attached that represent a significant value for the owner.
this is not exculpating the behavior of course, but highlights something has changed in this area at least.
it's likely that this will result in the overhead containers having locks that are engaged for as long as the slides are armed.
Also the size of cabin luggage is starting to get out of hand, and there’s only minor attempts to mitigate the problem. During my last two flights airlines were offering to check-in luggage for free for those who volunteered, yet almost nobody did, people still preferred to carry huge cases in the cabin just for the convenience factor. Without some stricter rules people will always choose the easy way.
There are at least three factors making people strongly prefer carrying to checking in. One, you can't "lose" a carry-on, unlike check-in. Two, obviously, tickets tend to be cheaper without check-in luggage. Three, you don't have to wait ridiculous amount of time for the luggage (IME it's usually 10-15 minutes, but once I waited an hour), you can just grab your carry-on and leave the airport.
If it was just the price, or just the fear of lost baggage, it would be much easier. But with all three, the incentives are all aligned against check-in. So as you say, it would require stricter enforcement of rules to fix. And/or much stricter rules. And maybe fixing the luggage pick-up times would help.
EDIT: fourth factor I just remembered. If you opt for checked-in luggage, you suddenly have to arrive 60-120 minutes earlier and spend that time in a queue. Adding pick-up time, that's 20% of your waking day spent just dealing with luggage.
Another factor in the US (and often copied by other countries) is the absurd security-theater restrictions on what you can bring with you. If you need/want to bring several types of creams, lotions, gels, etc. you're out of luck. Ditto if you need/want to bring any tools with questionable points or edges. Or several other categories of items you can find on placards at every security bottleneck (each one a worse security problem than what they purportedly seek to prevent). I don't absolutely need any of these things, but I don't like being caught flat-footed without some of them when I'm on the road for a week or more each month, so I end up checking bags.
> you suddenly have to arrive 60-120 minutes earlier
That seems like a bit of an exaggeration. I travel a fair bit. The worst bag-checkin delay I've ever encountered was barely over half an hour. The security lines are routinely longer than that, and everyone carrying huge roll-aways makes those worse. Those, or the lines to re-book when flights are changed, are the real reasons to arrive early.
I wonder why airlines don't just charge for all carry-on baggage and make checked baggage free. Doesn't it make sense to charge for behavior that you want to discourage?
It would be a nightmare to police. Can I have things in my pockets? Can I carry my handbag if I don't have pockets? What about a bottle of water? Or a snack for my kid or myself? What if we keep kosher and can't eat anything you have on board? What if I'm diabetic?
They raised luggage fees, but haven’t ticket prices actually declined when adjusted for inflation? The only key difference now seems to be that airlines are more à la carte than they used to be. And the road warrior types are already getting a free checked bag with their credit card or airline status. However the size restrictions really ought to be better enforced. There are some massive bags getting on board many flights.
They're playing extreme shenanigans with the ticket price, to segment the pricing as much as possible. This à la carte approach has side effects - in particular, it strongly incentivizes people flying on their own account (as opposed to those flying on company money) to try and get out of as many of the menu items as possible. Traveling with a ridiculously inconvenient set of oversized carry-ons to avoid checked luggage fee is a standard practice at this point. Airlines should be responsible for upgrading safety measures to offset the danger they create with their business tricks.
I try to keep my luggage in the cabin when possible instead of checking it in because I do not want my luggage to be damaged as they tend to be very careless with the handling.
Those passengers aren't to blame, regulators and aircraft designers are to blame.
People are idiots in the aggregate, and reliably exhibit herd behavior counterproductive to their survival. Aircraft design must account for this.
There's something to the famous Feynman quote if we apply it in this context:
"For a successful technology, reality
must take precedence over public relations,
for Nature cannot be fooled. -- Richard P. Feynman
In order to be certified aircraft must be completely evacuated during a test in 90 seconds. Here's such a test of the A380, Boeing etc. conduct tests in the same manner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIaovi1JWyY
Numerous real-world examples of emergency evacuations "in the wild" have shown that evacuations proceed nothing like what's shown in these tests.
If aircraft manufacturers and regulators faced up to this we wouldn't have this problem. You'd get actual safety instead. E.g. design changes to aircraft mitigating the aisle blockages that do happen in these evacuations, but aren't accounted for in tests, more emergency exits etc.
FWIW the first reaction across all russian language sources was exactly the same as on this thread. From what I understand (based on later reporting and comments by two survivors) there were no delays due to people grabbing bags or anything else. The maim issue seem to have been the rear escape door not working. It might be a good idea to wait for official results of the investigation before calling for all sort of action.
I’ve seen many posts like this in Russian media too. While the death toll is huge and the air carrier’s stock has plunged 3% down, there is a natural motivation for existence of social media fakes blaming passengers. Someone shared similar post on Facebook recently from an account that was created a few months ago and has posted only 3 meaningless picture shares ever since. Initially many media outlets did not even mention air carrier’s name in their stories covering the accident.
From multiple video sources it’s clear that the plane caught fire only after violent progressive bouncing on runway. The preceding events (lightning strike, partial radio loss, overweight landing) set up a stage for a disaster but hardly were direct causes of the fire.
Having been a private pilot for a while, we, pilots, are trained for emergencies. For example, my instructor routinely idles engine power without saying a word during flight reviews. On FAA practical test you are supposed to glide and land an airplane that lost power completely. Though I hope to never encounter engine loss in real life, I did dozens of practice approaches with zero power.
However passengers are never trained. This accident’s survivor witnessed that screams started after first bounce. When gear failed and fire ignited on second or third kick screams got louder. One couldn’t hear crew instructions in this mess. You can’t be sure you’d behave rationally until you’re there.
If we want extra safety we should train for rare situations like this. How many ditching incidents you can recall beyond Hudson miracle of 2009? Then why explain how to inflate a life vest every time on board. Shouldn’t we better teach passengers to leave their belongings, to crawl under smoke, to push other people out if they are unconscious? I would create a financial incentive for those travelers who undergone such a training and passed certain test.
Statistically, however, commercial flying today is much safer than traveling by car. In the US alone about 100 people are killed on the road every single day. So if we are optimizing for the number of souls lost during transportation, it is unclear what needs to be fixed with a top priority.
”Shouldn’t we better teach passengers to leave their belongings, to crawl under smoke, to push other people out if they are unconscious?”
Teaching will help only a little, at best. You would have to train passengers.
The more they’re under stress, the harder it is for untrained passengers to deviate from their standard “leave a plane” program. That includes taking one’s luggage and waiting for other passengers.
And yes, that applies to the life vests instructions, too. Advantage there is, that if you need those, chances are you’ll have minutes to prepare (but often, passengers still will make the mistake of opening them while inside the plane)
Agree. You can't rely on everyone's behaving rationally. You should rather expect panic.
Though knowing there could be smoke or you might need to crawl will trigger thoughts at least in a subset of people and will increase an overall survival rate.
As for life vests - even in Hudson accident they were left unused. Maybe in the 1960s they were helpful but for now they look obsolete. Chances are you'll get fire rather than ditching. I feel their value is more psychological.
That depends on the aircraft type though. Helicopter passengers that are traveling over large bodies of water (e.g. offshore platform workers) are usually required to go through emergency training. In many jurisdictions that includes escaping a sinking helicopter in a (physical) simulator, and that's a rather unpleasant procedure, to put it mildly.
To this day, I still don't take more than a very small backpack on board any aircraft with me. I don't understand people taking huge roll ons with them in the passenger compartment?
Is it really too much to check the bags in and wait at the baggage carousel at the other end to retrieve them? Airlines need to can the exorbitant baggage fees to encourage people to check bags into the hold rather than try and take their entire 2 weeks vacation worth of stuff with them in the cabin.
It is particularly annoying that on almost every flight I am on, I have to remove my very small and light backpack (usually just containing a book and my phone, headphones etc.) from the overhead bins and am forced to stow it under my feet in front of me (I am quite tall, and prefer nothing on the floor in front of me to prevent me stretching my legs in the limited room available) in order to make room for hundreds of others who can't bear to wait a few more minutes at the destination airport. I try to travel light and take up as little room as possible on the plane, and I get penalised because too many people try to do the opposite. It is a lose-lose endgame.
Increase the incentives to check bags in the hold, restrict carry on even further - that should make it a much more pleasant cabin experience, even in a non emergency.
> Is it really too much to check the bags in and wait at the baggage carousel at the other end to retrieve them?
Yes. For me, that's really too much, if there's an alternative that's much quicker to check in (online), must quicker at arrival, doesn't have the risk of losing your luggage, and (in today's world) much cheaper as well.
We make it a point in our family to be able to do all our travel with carry-ons only, even if it's a multi-week trip to the other side of the world.
The last 2 times we checked in our luggage, part of the luggage did not arrive. If you have a carefully orchestrated vacation going from one place to the next, that can be a huge hassle.
Why do you like risking to loose your bags and constantly add 30minutes to your trips waiting for bags at the carousel? I never check bags and it's never a cost thing, only speed and convenience.
>>Is it really too much to check the bags in and wait at the baggage carousel at the other end to retrieve them?
Yes, because the airlines I usually fly with have a single manned desk for check-ins, so whenever I fly with anything to check I literally have to add 60-90 minutes just for standing in a queue to check it in. It's obscene. So I'd rather travel "light" and fit everything I need in a bag that's allowed on board and go straight through departures. And then of course there are things I wouldn't ever check in - my laptop and camera - so they need to come with me on-board anyway.
I solve the problem by always paying extra for exit seats - usually because they have extra legroom, but also because in an emergency the number of potentially stupid and deadly people between me and the exits is as low as possible.
I also find it particularly galling that I can't even put my day pack in an overhead bin because of all the other people who already slowed down loading as they wrangle their roll-away and their backpack (and purse and jacket) onto the plane, who will drastically slow down exit the same way. I've had to waste more of my life waiting for them than in bag-check lines.
Picking up bags at the carousel is another matter. That can take significant time. That is a legitimate concern, even though I personally choose otherwise. I bought a decent bag and pack it properly, so I've never had a problem with damage (~30 trips and still going strong). I've had my bag delayed twice, once for more than a day. There are tradeoffs, but mostly I think people act selfishly by trying to save themselves a few bucks and a few minutes. It's a Prisoners' Dilemma kind of thing. Those are individually rational decisions, but when everyone makes the same decision it ends up being worse for everyone.
Do they though? Or is that just people's perception? It's a common case in life that people operate on extremely inflated perceptions of risk, often related to how news invert risk perceptions (the more you hear about something on the news, the less likely it is to happen; journalists and article writers don't report on stuff that happens regularly).
The last 2 times I checked my luggage, at least one piece didn't arrive.
In one of those cases, it was our camping gear that we needed a few days later (luckily we got it the morning we left the hotel for that campground, which was a 4 hour drive from the hotel). The other case, it was literally all my cloths for a 5 day stay. It arrived 2 days later. (The airline paid for essentials.)
I know that the official statistics of lost luggage are very low. I'm sure that these number don't come close to reality, probably due to some technicality (e.g. 'lost' only counts when it never showed up, instead of showing up after a few days.)
When you plan vacations that go from one place to the other, with hotels, cars, and activities booked everywhere, the last thing you want to happen is throw it all into disarray because your luggage didn't arrive. (And, yes, we usually plan for a day or 2 close to the airport in case flights get cancelled etc.)
I am a frequent traveller and they lose my luggage all the time, about 5% of my trips. In case you are wondering, this is at western airports and with "good" airlines.
Funny (?) enough, most often they lose my luggage on direct flights.
Quite frequently when I finally get my luggage back, it is damaged.
As another anecdata, my mother visits her home country every year, and they have lost her luggage EACH TRIP for over 15 years now.
I was speaking anecdotally, but after an airline lost my luggage once I made a point to never check a bag again unless I absolutely had to. And the process for getting reimbursed for lost luggage is an enormous pain in the ass.
As you said, baggage fees can be high especially on budget airlines. But in the rest of your comment you totally ignore that and assume it’s simply about convenience.
After having to live without my luggage for days due to a cancelled flight in a foreign city (where they wouldn't return our bags) I'm never checking again unless I'm literally moving internationally.
Yes, it is too much, because I lost count how many luggages I had to replace du to careless handling by ground crews and that is assuming that we actually get it back.
> I have to remove my very small and light backpack [...] from the overhead bins and am forced to stow it under my feet in front of me
I put my foot down when people ask for this. I paid to check my baggage in so I can enjoy the free space under the seat in front of me. This tiny backpack is my carry on. People who want to us that space for their giant bag can go get bent.
They should actually bill the carry on by volume, excessive carry on is one of the thing slowing on and outboarding the most, costing airlines money in the process.
At the bottom of which is this interesting paragraph:
And for a slightly different perspective, here are some comments from Christine Negroni, aviation safety journalist and author of the Flying Lessons blog:
Like you, I found myself shaking my head when I saw the videos or read reports of people taking their carry on luggage off the plane. Then I interviewed a passenger on Asiana 214 [the 2013 crash-landing of a 777 in San Francisco] who had done so and was surprised by his explanation. He told me that when the plane came to a stop and the evacuation began, he acted by habit in gathering his things and only afterward did he realize what he was doing. So I think we cannot discount the effect of altered state of consciousness as playing a role in this behavior. You may have read about this as a form of “negative panic.”
Which may lead to a revision of Hanlon’s razor:
”Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by indifference.”
Even with flight attendants desperately screaming “leave your bags!” and a fire raging? More likely that person was just trying to hide his embarrassment.
I've never been in a flight accident (thankfully), but from my experience in amateur kickboxing fights when you're in a stressful environment (in a ring) and everyone is screaming, I don't think I ever heard a thing my corner was yelling at me, even if they were only a few metres away, my brain just went into auto-pilot. So I wouldn't discount his story.
I was in a low-speed motorcycle accident once (no real injuries, just a long bruise down one side) and remember literally nothing that happened in the first five minutes afterwards, even though I'd somehow gotten my bike off the road with the help of a witness during that time. I didn't even consciously check myself for injuries until after I'd copied down the license plate number said witness shared with me.
It's a total trash article, just sensationally-hysterical crying.
"It’s not clear at this point if the plane was on fire before it landed"
It is totally clear, just read more official sources. Plane was not on fire before landing. You can see it even on videos.
"While a deadly fire raged around them, witnesses say people were nonetheless stopping to collect their carry-ons, clogging the aisles and slowing the evacuation"
It's a lie. One of the survivors, who left the plane last (not first), witnessed there was no such issue, path was clear and evacuation was quick.
Engines didn't stop - they were working as blust furs, accelerating fire, so people behind the wings died in about 20 seconds. 2 people survived after row 12, just because they started running before the fire started.
Such an awful example of "sensational" journalism.
Pilots survived and already answered questions - they decided to land because all systems started failing after lightning strike, not because of fire - there was no fire before landing.
I didn't claim otherwise and yet the point still stands: as far as it is known the was no visible fire. only the final report will establish the absence of fire. can't really fathom how people can't tell the difference.
My five year old often struggles with compliance until someone explains "why." I suspect that adults aren't much different except for a stronger ability to suppress that reaction. Maybe, as the fine article mentions, rethinking safety briefings to include language that implies solid reasoning would lead to focus in the event of a disaster like this.
After all, it's completely understandable to be thinking only of oneself in a high-stress, unexpected, and possibly life-threatening circumstance. Including brief supportive reasoning reminding people of others' safety might have positive effects.
As usual in aviation, you cannot make a decision without impacting a lot of other stuff, this case is no different.
For example, on certain aircraft models with limited OH space, a number of luggage OH bins - especially towards the extreme ends of the cabins as that is where the FA stations are - store emergency equipment as well.
If you decide to lock the bins, then either you have to sacrifice OH space and reconfigure the bins to move the emergency equipment to exclusive bins, re-certify the plane (as it involves emergency equipment) and re-train cabin crew to never store any emergency gear in the other bins. Or, keep the bin configuration as it is, but don't lock the ones storing emergency equipment while you lock the others, and face a situation where pax in the extreme ends of the cabins - where emergency exits happen to be as well - can still get their stuff, which may encourage others to pry their bins open and lose a lot of time.
I remember reading that this was considered, but that there was a significant concern it would lead to passengers spending more time trying to break in to the lockers to get their bags. So it was abandoned.
I can't beleive that it can be any worse than if people can get their luggage out. When you arrive to the gate on something like an A320 or 737, at the middle seats you often need to wait five minutes until everyone ahead and behind you (assuming both exits are used) has collected their luggage and got off. Often the isle ahead of the blocker is clear, it's just someone is struggling to get their luggage out and nobody else can get past.
Federal and international regulations state than an aircraft with more than 44 passengers must be able to be fully evacuated in less than half of that - 90 seconds. Crews are meticulously trained for this, including practical tests. (My wife used to be crew on 777 and A380)
Depends on jurisdiction, but I think in most countries it's a crime to not adhere to aviation safety regulations - including ignoring what the staff tells you to do in an emergency.
Smoking in the lavatories, or standing up and refusing to sit down when you don't want to travel with someone - that results in criminal liability.
There was a report of people being taken off a flight a few days ago for refusing to listen to the safety announcements. They were sitting in an exit row.
There are also several cases over recent years where immigration activists have been standing up in a plane when they wanted to stop the deportation of criminals. Result is usually fines (a criminal liability) and maybe ending up on a no-fly list (which is then not a criminal justice issue).
The passengers in the New Zealand flight were jerks but one of them said:
"I have to say that if watching the safety video is so crucial and you can be escorted off the plane, maybe Air New Zealand should stop making 'Rachel Hunter ice cream ad' safety videos," the passenger said.
in reference to the the way Air New Zealand makes their videos with more an aim of going viral on youtube than getting across a safety message.
Their last video was actually withdrawn because people hated it so much.
The most surprising thing to me was that while watching the plane driving along, turning, coming to a stop, there was not a single fire engine there.
Why is nobody talking about that? Every time I saw some kind messed up landing, I saw fire engines rushing towards and/or behind the plane even before it lands.
Yes, even for something with a single pilot and no apparent fire they would usually have airport fire crews chase the emergency plane at an airport which has such things. Unless the pilots explicitly say they need something else e.g. "we have a woman with a heart attack we need paramedics to meet us".
You'll hear on radio recordings the fire crew being told which plane is "theirs" and authorised to enter the runway which is otherwise off limits to ground vehicles. Something like "Emergency plane is number one for two six left. Fire Two you are Cleared to follow them onto two six left".
However, the moment this plane hit the ground and started burning somebody at the tower should have seen it. I mean...probably many people saw it. What about them?
Airports are large. As in "huge". This is not obvious from airplane traffic, as airplanes are also fast, so they cover the distances at a proportionate speed. Check out any emergency landing videos where firefighters are visible: the trucks seem tiny and slow, even at top speed (which could be ~200 kph). Speculation from reports: firefighters were a) expecting them at a different rwy, b) chasing the plane as it touched down, but no video long enough to actually see them arrive.
Alright, let's not overdo this.
I live in Frankfurt and I know what a big airport is. I also know that fire trucks are not THAT small...This was an emergency landing. The trucks should have been all over this plane the moment it touched down. Just as you can see it on many videos of even less dangerous situations. However there is not a single fire truck to see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmvcoAPLeuA nowhere. Even when people were already away from it. Also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX_tMKmUjbg you see people starting to get out of the plane. Nothing. There is some kind of vehicle coming over at the end but it's not a fire truck.
In this video (around 2Mins) https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=k5Lw7_1557086404 you see finally water from obviously a single fire truck being sprayed on the plane but there must have passed a very long time since the vehicle from the other video is standing on the right site and people are gathered around it.
So please. Don't tell me there isn't a massive fuckup here.
The fire trucks do not know where the plane will stop on the runway. A plane coming in to land will be going well over 100 mph. The fire trucks cannot be on the runway ahead of the plane (lest they be taken out by the plane and make the crash worse with the side benefit of now having more victims and less first responders).
It is physically impossible for the firetrucks to be at the plane the moment it stops.
That is one thing I did not say - just that I have not seen any footage longer than ~1 min. I surely would have expected more than a single fire truck responding after a longer period.
I'm aware of that but we have quite a large overview over the airport while the plane was moving. As I said, in other situations the fire trucks have been visible. Here they aren't for quite a long time which I think is weird. Especially because the landing was botched already and it was a emergency landing.
b) require free luggage transport (up to certain limit)
c) provide much stronger penalties if airlines lose luggage
d) provide strong penalties if an airline allows too much luggage in the passenger compartment
In Japan, having lots of luggage in overhead bins is rare. However, I've never been inconvenienced by lost luggage, or had to wait very long (if at all) for luggage at the carousel.
If the airplane was a commercial building, it seems likely that the overhead bins would be banned by fire code.
There have been several accidents where passengers perished in an otherwise survivable situation due to smoke inhalation. The most well-known example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airtours_Flight_28M which had to abort a takeoff due to an engine fire where leaked fuel ended up quickly burning through the fuselage in a similar manner to what appears to have happened here.
Whether you think the risk is worth the hassle is up to you to decide.
Would being able to lock overhead compartments remotely solve some of these issues? Have a hardware switch somewhere for staff for emergencies to literally make it impossible for people to get their stuff.
I kind of thought something like this was already possible but never gave it more thought
That sounds like it would lead to people blindly smacking at the overhead compartments in a panic when their brain gets stuck in a loop at "step 2, get bag". Sudden operational mode changes in emergencies have a long history of causing that sort of brain shutdown.
Official sources deny it, from Wikipedia Aeroflot 1492:
The information that evacuation was delayed because some passengers grabbed their baggage have not been confirmed. According to TASS's law enforcement source the majority of passengers in the tail end of the aircraft had practically no chance of rescue. "This is evidenced by the position of the bodies of many passengers who were found in the tail of the aircraft. They did not even have time to unfasten their seat belts, they died of poisoning in their seats. Someone might have lost consciousness when the plane hit the runway. The causes of death of all the victims are now established" - said the source. He added that the passengers from the tail section of the aircraft, who managed to escape, moved to the front of the aircraft even before it stopped.[10] According to witnesses some baggage fell from overhead compartments during the hard landing and passengers removed them in order to free the passage.[11]
> The briefings need to be shorter and more concise, and this needs to be a part of them
This.
Instead we get airlines making [un]funny short films stuffed with celebrities (yes, I'm looking at you, BA) because their marketing department knows it's sure-fire PR and they'll get tens of millions of clicks/views/shares on social media out of it.
I normally never pay attention to the briefings because I just heard too many of them. But the BA is funny. Works for me.
More general about the briefings: The explanation of the life vest seems to take most of the time. I often wonder how many airplane accidents involved landing on water, making that instruction worth having every single time. Maybe someone knows ?
TLDR: news about passengers taking luggage and blocking the evacuation are probably fake, most of the people who died couldn't evacuate because they died from CO-poisoning in seconds.
Maybe the overheads compartment should lock and remain locked in the event of an accident so that people are forced to leave some of their carry-ons on the plane.
It may be time to start prosecuting people that carry anything out during an emergency evacuation. A heavy fine (at least) seems a reasonable price to avoid loss of life in future.
People carry their luggage because they know it will take years before they get reimbursed, and often they remain stranded in the foreign city with no passport. You need to ensure there is no incentive to keep your luggage, otherwise people will do it no matter the fine.
So jail time then. People can learn to keep their passports on their persons to avoid jail time for putting it in the carry-on and taking the carry-on.
Prosecuting people for doing that won't actually change anything, because very few people in emergency situations are actually thinking clearly enough to even consider laws in the first place.
Compare to airline seat belts: the reason they always have that demonstration at the start of the flight about them is because there have been cases where people literally forgot how the seatbelt worked in an emergency situation, didn't have the mental coherency available to figure it out again, and kept trying to push at the side of it where the latch release would be in a car.
A better legal approach would be to place limits on carry-on luggage in the first place, so that the physical possibility of delaying evacuations with it is removed.
I read that in surveying passengers who hadn't been in an emergency evacuation, about one third of people said they'd try to take at least one bag. In surveying passengers who had been involved in an emergency evacuation, about one half actually did. So you're not alone.
What I did find interesting though, were the other side effects I hadn't considered. Time taken actually picking up your bag, most people will justify that away to themselves. Clogging up the aisle, most people seem to think that's something other people do.
Time wasted arguing with the flight attendant when they try to persuade you that your bag could damage the slide? Where does the inevitable pile of bags go if the flight attendants start winning that argument? One report had that pile formed in front of a cockpit door. Another had that pile form in front of the off-side exit which should have been otherwise usable.
(and only one of these points would be addressed by wider aisles!)
I do find myself speculating whether the modern atmosphere of everyone knowing better than the experts compounds the issue.
I think perhaps travelers need more training (at least the mental process of checking "what shall I do if we need to evacuate") and perhaps the luggage compartments need to be automatically locked when evacuating. It's hard to make people think the same way, though.
Aisles aren't going to become much wider - it's always a compromise of convenience and safety in the extremely unlikely event of evacuation vs. cost and also the now ever-more prevalent concern about co2 emissions cause by reduced number of seats.
Perhaps the first thing to do is have a LOUD intercom when evacuating: "do not take any luggage, just get out". This is already emphasized in the routine pre-flight security show, but people don't pay much attention.
Perhaps they do need actual training? As in, you're not legally allowed to board a plane if you're under age X without supervision of a trained adult, and you're not allowed to board a plane at or above age X without a mandatory training. The mandatory training would be something like few hours at a training centre and included practical simulated emergencies in which you had to behave.
Airlines could offload this onto government, ticket prices would remain the same (after a brief re-training period), and maybe - just maybe - it would cut down on the amount of stupidity and extremely selfish behavior you see some passengers engaging in on planes every day.
Well, yes, but then, it's always a trade-off. Evacuations are extremely rare. The cost of these trainings would likely prevent a lot more deaths somewhere else (e.g. in training car and heavy vehicle drivers and bicyclists, not to mention motorcyclists).
The surface area increases with the square of linear dimensions. So increasing aisle space meaningfully would make planes significantly heavier—unless you’re suggesting making seats narrower to compensate.
> The surface area increases with the square of linear dimensions
That's for a ball. A cylinder does not increase that way.
Plus you only need to increase the width, not the height. So the surface areas goes up as twice the linear dimension, which I don't think would be significantly heavier, just a bit incrementally heavier.
Fair enough. I would say another likely issue is that of the highway problem: you make wider aisles—and now people think they can definitely take their stuff.
Airlines are often only marginally profitable, which is why seat spacings are as tight as they are. The seating configuration is a combined effect of limited energy availability and economics.
So yes - it does cost that much to increase space, and reducing passenger loads would lead to significant losses.
By any reasonable metric, including passenger miles and total passenger numbers, accidents are incredibly rare compared to other transport modes.
The way to deal with the problem is to make crashes and fires even less likely, not to expect untrained panicking passengers to deal rationally or intelligently with a situation they've never experienced.
Solution: during the safety briefing, there should be a statement about bringing bags during an evacuation, and they should mention a fine on the order of tens of thousands of dollars for not complying.
Simple solution, digital locks that are able to be activated either by the cabin crew manually, or by the pilot automatically as a result of some controls that indicate there is a problem.
Anytime a programmer sees a non-technological issue, they think "I know, I'll use computers!" Now they have two problems. (With apologies to JZ et al.)
I was watching the evacuation video and as soon as I saw an idiot going down the slides with 3 bags I realised the death toll would be unnecessarily high. It’s safe to say those 3 bags cost 3 lives or more. What utter selfishness and stupidity.
People who go into some kind of dumbshit mode where they violate a rather basic social contract, by clearly indicating higher value for their crap than human lives? Yes, I'm getting a sense of acting irrationally right now: how about assaulting and trampling them? Hmm, small problem, while they deserve that and I think it would be completely ethical, their body will be yet another obstruction that will potentially cost others their lives.
You seem to be under the assumption that people in a true emergency situation have the mental coherency to even actively consider their own safety. The reason airline safety rules are so often repeated is that it gets people acting on 'automatic' without thinking about it, and even then there are various documented cases where airplane emergency survivors just sat in their seats without doing anything until someone told them to get up and off the plane.
Was the pilot also deadly stupid by trying to land the plane without releasing the fuel first? As I understand very few pilots have the experience to do that.
Not all airplanes can dump their fuel. Only the bigger ones can. I once had to fly circles around an airport for 5 hours to burn up the fuel, because the airplane couldn't dump it.
They generally only dump fuel over the ocean. Not great from an environmental perspective, but at least it isn't landing on people's houses or farm land.
I can't imagine why any pilot would have trouble landing the plane full of fuel. The issue with landing heavy is the potential for damage to the landing gear and tires, a perfectly acceptable trade off in an emergency.
Again, aircraft aren't that fragile. You can certainly perform a safe landing immediately after take off. We don't know the reason they hit so hard, but I would be very surprised if being overweight had anything at all to do with it.
I am cautious of any "facts" that come out this early, but if flight controls were failing, that seems like an excellent reason to get on the ground as soon as possible (and a likely explanation for why the landing was not smooth). I don't see any reason to call the pilots stupid, and dumping fuel or spending time burning it off would not be normal or necessary under these circumstances. It was a tragedy, and only time will tell what exact sequence of events led to it. It is possible that pilot error was a component, but it is far too early to tell.
I think plane systems should be able to function after lightning strike. And initial failure of all systems - defect of the plane construction (SSJ-100). It's just my opinion, not official words.
Since training and education does not have any effect, isn't it time to make it a criminal offense to take your belongings when you are evacuated in an emergency situation?
I vote for making it a criminal offense, but I highly doubt any of the passengers are "trained" to not do that. Being told to do something is barely "education", and it is definitely not "training".
Perhaps people should be taught that aircrafts are dictatorships. The crew of a ship has legal authority over passengers. The politely-spoken comment, "federal law mandates that you follow crew member instructions" in their 5 minute briefing doesn't seem to stick out to anyone.
In the US, it already is, insofar as it is a knowing and willful violation of flight crew and/or flight attendant instructions. I imagine that generally similar laws are in place in many other jurisdictions.
Simple rule, in case of evacuation all luggage carried by evacuated people will be confiscated and destroyed (or returned after paying 5 years average salary to leave a loophole for rare cases of really valuable luggage).
All luggage recovered from the plane after evacuation will be given back to owners.
> If indeed lightning touched off a fire aboard Aeroflot 1492, this would be highly unusual
No, the lightning did not set off a fire. There was no fire until it landed. See Wikipedia Aeroflot 1492.
> there’s evidence that the death toll was higher than it should have been, thanks to the selfish actions of a number of passengers
Fails to reference any of this evidence. All eyewitness accounts I've read (see below) say the passengers with bags were business class and they did not interfere with the evacuation. The state news said 4 days ago the evacuation was completed in 55 seconds (last link at the bottom). Sure, they are lying and this guy has better sources but he failed to mention where he got his "evidence" from.
Eyewitnesses (a passenger and a flight attendant) say the back of the plane filled with thick smoke and started melting even before it stopped. The only people who survived in the rows 12+ were the two who rushed to the front while the plane was still moving. By the time the plane stopped people in rows 12+ were most likely already unconscious. Yet, TFA's author is smearing people as "stupid" and is 100% certain it was the stupid luggage people.
https://ria.ru/20190507/1553334256.html https://lenta.ru/news/2019/05/06/saved/ https://tass.ru/proisshestviya/6403085