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How can PAX be persuaded not to take their luggage in an emergency evac?

How can PAX be persuaded not to take their luggage in an emergency evac?

Old Sep 10, 2015, 3:23 am
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How can PAX be persuaded not to take their luggage in an emergency evac?

Following pictures of BA passengers with their hand luggage after the emergency evacuation of their aircraft in LAS, which itself follows the same thing happening earlier this year on a TK accident in IST



How can PAX be education not to stop and take their hang luggage, clogging up the aisles and being a hazard one the emergency sides?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34191035
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Old Sep 10, 2015, 4:10 am
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Originally Posted by Worcester
How can PAX be education not to stop and take their hang luggage, clogging up the aisles and being a hazard one the emergency sides?
You can't. No matter what happens, someone will always grab at least some of their cabin baggage. Much of it is just basic instinct, people train themselves that they grab their stuff when they leave a location. Evac or not, people will reach for their bags as a reflex without thinking.
There may be items in the bags that the pax needs (passport, money, meds, etc) and they will just grab it. In many cases, it would take longer for them to stop, think, override their instinct and not pick up something then it would be for them to just collect it.
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Old Sep 10, 2015, 7:12 am
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From the all day Road Warrior training I had at the last (2010) Delta ATLDO on Delta's campus, when we were in the cabin simulator and they introduced "smoke" we popped the emergency doors as the FAs were constantly yelling "LEAVE EVERYTHING, COME THIS WAY" (pointing at the doors with emergency slides deployed).
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Old Sep 10, 2015, 2:51 pm
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One thing that would help would be the confidence that we will either get our stuff back or proper compensation. As it stands now I would expect neither. (The bags likely would come back minus the valuable stuff in them.)
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Old Sep 12, 2015, 10:55 am
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Originally Posted by Loren Pechtel
One thing that would help would be the confidence that we will either get our stuff back or proper compensation. As it stands now I would expect neither. (The bags likely would come back minus the valuable stuff in them.)
I think you've hit the nail on the head. In the end, people are mostly rational actors. Not having access to your phone/passport/money/credit cards/meds/... in a foreign country is a very unpleasant experience. If you leave them behind during an evacuation, do you expect to see those items again in a reasonable timeframe? If not, do pax think that the airline will help solve emerging issues (getting emergency travel documents, money, food, lodging...)? Note that even "losing" check-in luggage abroad for a few days can already ruin a trip, and that shouldn't contain any valuable items.

Unfortunately, pictures like the one shown above only reaffirm the intuition people have that they should bring their stuff with them. Most pax on the photo have all of their belongings and are on their way: you can literally see a girl with walking away from the scene with her suitcase and two bags while she's talking on the phone! Morally speaking, the pax who left everything behind did the right thing, but they are the "losers" in the situation: at best they will have to wait for a few hours while their luggage is being secured, at worst they will lose their valuables, incur a lot of extra costs and have their expensive trip ruined. (If you think about it, it's not unlike the famous prisoner's dilemma.)
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Old Sep 12, 2015, 4:24 pm
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Rhone: Welcome to Flyertalk!

And I agree with you especially when it comes to meds. I have a backup supply of my husband's meds in my purse so I'll be taking that with me. No problem leaving our carryons in the overhead if I can keep my purse (which is under the seat in front of me.)
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Old Sep 12, 2015, 10:01 pm
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Originally Posted by Worcester
How can PAX be persuaded not to take their luggage in an emergency evac?
You can not. In another thread it was suggested that we just might see locking bins.
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Old Sep 12, 2015, 10:11 pm
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As people are noting here, you can't - it's human nature.

But you can poke fun at it as a colleague of mine at FBT did in our weekly (and satirical) Lobby Bar feature, to wit:

...Put on a life vest and smile for the camera. First-class passengers on a British Airlines jet that caught fire on the runway in Las Vegas were the first to benefit from a new service from the airline: an additional flight attendant was stationed at the first-class door to assist each passenger with a selfie before going down the slide to ensure that passengers taking selfies didnt slow the evacuation...
<SNIP>
Above from Lobby Bar September 11: Narcissism in a Crisis, Cars with Fins, Spas to Go, and Edible Computers
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Old Sep 12, 2015, 10:48 pm
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in a life and death situation, and only in a life and death situation - physically. including but not limited to violence, and threats of violence.

OP photo not best example? for example the hudson water landing would be better example.
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Old Sep 12, 2015, 10:49 pm
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Locking bins seems unlikely - it adds complexity and mass to the plane, as well as something that can (and will) break, usually in the most inconvenient way: trying to do a fast turn, luggage bins locked on their own and now you have one plane full of angry pax who won't get off without their bags, and another plane load waiting to board and angry that their flight is delayed. And it has to be engaged at evac time and actually work then, and it still doesn't deal with the bags under the seat.

In a lot of my experience, people will more likely do the right thing if you make it easier and more obvious how to do that, than to do the wrong thing (some will do the wrong thing no matter how hard you make it). If people are lining up to exit and you're in a window seat, it's easier to pull your bag out from under the seat than to get to the aisle. If you're halfway between exits and already standing up, but people are leaving one row at a time (like for deboarding), it's easier to pull your bag out of the overhead than to get to the exit. So how do you get people off the plane faster so there's less temptation to take bags with you?
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Old Sep 13, 2015, 9:41 am
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prosecute them for endangerment to life, and ban them for flying for a few years
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Old Sep 13, 2015, 9:49 am
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Inject fake smoke into the cabin and play simulated screams of people burning in agony over the PA.

Seriously though, the only way to make people evacuate as if it were a life or death situation is to make them think it is one. Otherwise it will be just like a fire drill in the office.
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Old Sep 13, 2015, 1:24 pm
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Originally Posted by bioblot
Seriously though, the only way to make people evacuate as if it were a life or death situation is to make them think it is one. Otherwise it will be just like a fire drill in the office.
It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure that a cabin of pax in full-on panic mode will deplane safer and quicker than a "relatively" calm cabin. I imagine people in caveman mode using physical violence on others to get themselves and their family to the slides first etc.
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Old Sep 13, 2015, 6:58 pm
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Originally Posted by bioblot
Seriously though, the only way to make people evacuate as if it were a life or death situation is to make them think it is one. Otherwise it will be just like a fire drill in the office.
You actually want people who are evacuating to do it just like a fire drill at the office-- it will go quickly, people will help each other and there will be minimal chaos. It's why you do drills. Panic causes things like everybody piling up against one emergency exit while 3 others are clear but unused.
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Old Sep 14, 2015, 6:46 am
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Originally Posted by chrisl137
You actually want people who are evacuating to do it just like a fire drill at the office-- it will go quickly, people will help each other and there will be minimal chaos. It's why you do drills. Panic causes things like everybody piling up against one emergency exit while 3 others are clear but unused.
On the whole I would agree. Having gone through 9/11 at the Pentagon I'm sure the various drills we'd gone through over the years certainly helped facilitate a relatively calm evacuation. At least in my part of the building, about 700 feet from the impact, there was no obvious or wide spread panic. We had light smoke in the hallways but no fire, collapsed walls, etc., so people pretty calmly and quietly walked to the nearest exits. To the best of my knowledge only a few people of the 25,000 people in the building not in the immediate impact area were injured in that process. Did the evacuation go exactly to plans? No, not really but close. Did it point up shortfalls in the plans? Absolutely though none that actually spoke to or caused loss of life or limb. One of the biggest shortfalls was that we had no rally point and no plan or method to take a roll call. That led to hours and actually days of not being able to account for all personnel and a lot of angst at the management level. Should say I'm speaking to the larger procedural evacuation plan. There were other shortfalls identified that were structural or facility related like lack of pathway lighting/signage, redundant alarm systems, redundant fire suppression, etc., that were eventually incorporated in the rebuild and subsequent renovations.

The one thing that did happen was that there were a few people who left all their personal belongings at their desks. In my group of about 200 we had five or six that left their purses or wallets in locked desk drawers or in their jackets hanging in their cubicles. Of those two of three had a heck of a time getting home as they had no car keys, no money, no Metro passes, and no ID. Obviously different than a plane but one of the new instructions, at least initially after 9/11, was to make sure you took at least your basic belongings with you in case of evacuation. Of course that doesn't mean all the pictures of the family, awards and decorations hanging on the wall, etc.

Last edited by Randyk47; Sep 14, 2015 at 7:50 am
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