You Can’t Take It With You (But Do Anyway): A Dangerous Evacuation Trend

Annually, pilots and flight attendants gather at their corporate training centers with the enthusiasm and slight trepidation of attending a dentist appointment. Here, in classrooms and at simulators, you’ll find us muttering commands to ourselves and practicing opening invisible doors as we wait for our names to be called by the trainers to demonstrate what we never want to have to do in real life. What awaits us over the course of a long day or two is a necessary evil. It’s here we undergo recurrent training, where we practice and are tested on emergency evacuations, and we know our jobs and lives depend on it.

Evacuating an aircraft is something we all must be able to accomplish in 90 seconds or less. Potential obstructions must be accounted for, and scenarios where things don’t go according to plan are tested all the time. These “evacuations” are practiced every day, everywhere in the world. If you ever wonder why rules are put into place (restrictions on exit row seating, placement of child seats, the fact that seats must be upright for takeoff and landing, etc.), it is to meet the universal 90-second criteria.

Enter the cell phone and the YouTube era. Thanks to mobile video, we now have start-to-finish accounts of real life emergency evacuations. With this, we are seeing a disturbing trend (besides the fact that people are taking video instead of paying attention to the active emergency situation they’re in): many people are evacuating with baggage.

According to findings in a 2000 National Transportation Safety Board report, of 46 emergency aircraft evacuations reviewed, approximately half of the passengers took bags along. Many of these items did impede egress, and in some cases, lives were lost as a direct result. Our crew training tells us that if passengers ignore our commands to leave everything, we are to take the bags from them and throw the luggage out the door to avoid a pile-up at the bottom, slowed evacuation speed, or a blocked exit. However, according to the NTSB report, even this practice has resulted in injuries as flying luggage can strike fleeing passengers. But items brought along will slow down the evacuation and still potentially cause injuries, so it’s a necessary move.

It’s sheer luck that situations like the British Airways engine fire evacuation went so well, as a slew of suitcases were seen in hand as people ran off the aircraft. Following events like these and the video evidence, scores of people decry the stupidity and carelessness displayed by these people on social media. So how is it that situations like these keep happening? Are we just seeing this firsthand for the first time, or is a new generation of entitled travelers leading to the endangerment of other people? Is it just the state of the world today?

In unfathomable real life situations, panic clouds judgment. Perhaps situations like these are a result of deliriousness in the face of danger. It’s nearly impossible to find a firsthand account of someone who has evacuated with their belongings. And it’s even more difficult to find anyone who will put their name to opinion pieces on why they would do it if it happened since public opinion tends to malign this way of thinking. Here, an anonymous contributor says that he/she thinks people take belongings due to “muscle memory,” because normal situations see us deplane with our things and we instinctively might do this during an emergency as well. However, this person also states that “[s]ome clients would understand either my delay or backing out of a deal due to a plane fire, but I can tell you that others would not. Now, my few thousand dollars worth of items being lost, could turn into a much bigger expense – not to mention the countless hours that I spent on stuff. Is any of this worth my life or that of another person? No. But, I feel I could evaluate the situation and take the gamble of taking the time to grab my small case and still make it out safe.” This sense of control over the situation is dangerous and reckless. Ninety seconds is not a long time, and any hindrance that would “only take a second” is not a drop in the bucket when you’ve got ninety or fewer to play with.

The anonymous passenger, sadly, is far from alone in thinking this way, as is evidenced by the NTSB report. According to statistics compiled in the study of passengers who’d been involved in emergency evacuations:

“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.”

It’s time we begin treating this disregard for human life as a federal offense. If the FAA and related entities begin criminalizing this behavior, perhaps it will begin curb it. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it seems jail time and fines impose a greater fear in people than death. But if this is what we have to do to save lives, then it’s time we do it. We have committed ourselves to the safety of the flying public, and so should the organizations governing us.

[Photo: AFP – Getty Images]